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Oral History Collection
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Special Collections
Musselman Library
Interview with
Marvin King
Interviewer: Shane Michael Garvin
Interview Date: March 28, 2009 An Oral History of Mr. Marvin King’s Life From Childhood Through World War II
Conducted By: Shane Michael Garvin
Professor Birkner
Historical Methods 300
April 1, 2009
Garvin: I am Shane Garvin from Gettysburg College, and I am here with Mr. Marvin King. I am in Hanover, Pennsylvania on March 28, 2009. And I guess Mr. King the first place to start is when and where were you born, and was it the same place that you grew up {Interview took place in House 166 at 425 Westminster Ave Hanover, PA 17331}?
King: I was born in a coal mining community in West Virginia (Born on April 30, 1922), In fact the name of the town was Coalwood.
Garvin: [laughs]
King: That was the name of it, in the southern part of West Virginia. My dad was a coalminer, and we lived there until I was a junior in high school. And during that time the depression was there. The mines would shut down, and got to be very difficult to make a living. So…
Garvin: Before we continue, can you tell us what your parents’ names were?
King: Tell you what?
Garvin: What your parents’ names were?
King: My dad’s name was Loman, L, O, M, A, N. And my mother’s name was Carolyn, but she was called Cally, always. Her maiden name was Morefeld, M, O, R, E, F, E, L, D. My dad was Loman David King. And they married, and I was born to them there in Coalwood, West Virginia. And as the depression got bad and all, we moved to Virginia, back to the family farm. My grandparents at that time were getting old, and so basically we moved back there, and my dad sort of took over running the farm in Virginia. And that is where I met my wife Louise. Garvin: Can you explain, before we move on to Virginia--can you explain what you remember about West Virginia? What your dad’s job was like?
King: Well, my dad was a coalminer as I said [clears throat], they didn’t have the safety features then that they now have. It was dangerous work, 680 feet down; it was a shaft mine, not a parallel [mine].
Garvin: Wow!
King: It was 680 feet deep. He took me down with him one time, and the men dug the coal by pick and shovel. They loaded it onto small little cars that were then towed out to where they called it “the cage.” It is an elevator, and the coal would get on the elevator, and they would take it up to the surface. And each coalminer got paid by the amount of coal that he dug. He got paid by the ton. And they would run these little cars across the scale, and each miner had a little round check, cab, with his number on it, and they would record number so and so had so many pounds of coal. And that is the way he got paid, by the amount of coal that he dug. But we moved. The depression came, and it was pretty bad, so like I said, we went to Virginia then. [We] lived on the farm which was my grandparents’ farm. His parents’ farm.
Garvin: And on the farm, what did you grow? What were the cash crops? Did you just have cow? And did you help? Or what--
King: Well, actually you sort of grew everything that you ate there. You didn’t ship the corn or the grain often. You just sort of made enough to live off of. We had milk cows and had horses. We didn’t have a tractor and stuff like that. We used horses to pull the plows and wagons, and stuff. And had raised chickens, so you got your eggs and your chicken, and raised hogs. So you they would kill hogs the following year, and you raised pretty much everything you needed. You didn’t need much cash input, you know.Garvin: Was it a very long day?
King: Well daylight to dark [both laugh]. It was hard work of course, you know-- they didn’t have a lot of the modern machinery they now have. We used horses to pull the plow as opposed to a tractor plow. I wouldn’t say it was primitive but it was the way you made a living back then. You would take your wheat to a mill about eight miles away and grind it and produce your flour. The miller would keep part of the wheat as compensation for grinding it up and making flour for you, see—that was his pay. He would keep, and so--
Garvin: So he would keep the wheat instead of actual cash?
King: Yeah, Yeah. It was rather primitive in a way, looking back on it, you know? We didn’t have a car, so we used horse and wagon. And, looking back on it, it was a tough time. But at the time we didn’t really realize it was tough. We were happy, you know, [we had] this little income and so forth. There was no dissention or anything. It was a very modest style of living. We ate healthy and lived healthy. And I went to high school there. The bus picks you up and takes you to the high school.
Garvin: Just to clarify, before we go any further, did you have any brothers or sisters?
King: No. I was an only child.
Garvin: Okay. And what were the name of the schools that you went to?
King: Well in Coalwood, West Virginia, it was the only school there, [it] was simply an elementary school.
Garvin: Okay.
King: And then later they had a junior high and high school in Welch, W, E, L, C, H. That was the county seat for Mcdowell County, West Virginia. And so I went to high school in Welch. Junior high and high school in West Virginia had twelve years of undergraduate work. You went to elementary school for six years and junior high school, seven and eight, and high school
for nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. So I went through the 11th grade, and I was a junior, that is
when I moved to Virginia. Which I found a little distressing at the time, all my friends were
there, you know…
Garvin: Of course.
King: You can imagine that, pack up and move somewhere else.
Garvin: Senior year especially.
King: You are going to grandpa’s and grandma’s place, and it was a great place to visit, but you
never thought about living there [both laugh].
Garvin: What did you do for fun growing up? Did you play sports, go to the movies, anything
like that?
King: There were no movies—I don’t want it to sound like a bad, bad thing, but we worked most
of the time. We really didn’t have much—maybe throw a ball and a bat a little bit, out in the
barn yard, or something like that. But [when] we got back from school, we had to raise the corn
and plow the garden, and pick the apples, and stuff like that. But I was not unhappy, strangely
enough. People say, “I would go crazy with that” but we didn’t have electricity in the home and
didn’t have a telephone. By today’s standards, pretty primitive, it was like it would be the pits
for young people today, How could you stand that?
Garvin: [laughs].
King: We accepted that because we had food on the table, loving parents, and friends at school.
Garvin: So you enjoyed your childhood and growing up years?
King: Enjoyed what?
Garvin: Your childhood and growing up years?
King: Oh childhood? Oh yeah, yeah. Simple games like marbles and jack rocks. Stuff like that. It was—I was very happy. I didn’t know any better [both laugh]. My parents and grandparents were very good to me. And I felt loved, and that is what counted, so it made a difference. But that is where I met my wife Louise when we moved to Virginia. See, I was a senior that year, she was a sophomore. We just—I don’t want to get ahead of the game, you tell me where you want to go from here.
Garvin: Actually, before we get to you and your wife, did you have—I think you already answered this, but did you have any others jobs besides helping your family?
King: Not through high school. Well, in my senior year I did drive a school bus. The students, seniors who had driving licenses, we drove the bus and you took it home with you at the end of the route.
Garvin: Wow[laughs}!
King: The next morning you made the route, picked up the kids and took them to school, and came back. And then I got a little bit, I forget what, it was very small pay for it, but I got a little bit better job of looking after the buses, that is taking them in to town for servicing and putting the gas in the tanks—I got to be a big shot [both laugh]! But the students drove the buses, of course we all were licensed drivers and took the course, and we drove the school buses, and you usually had someone who lived at the far end of the line, be the bus driver. He took the bus home with him, and in the morning he left, he started picking up everybody on the way to school. So...
Garvin: So you were the first one up? [laughing throughout question]
King: It was no big deal.Garvin: Of course you were young when the Great Depression first happened, but do you remember it well? Did it affect your family especially hard? Did you really even notice, or it was it the same?
King: Well, it was difficult. The coalmines were shut down one, two, or three days a week. And of course the miners got paid by the hour, or the coal they dug. And times were bad, and miners weren’t working. About that time the unions came in. John L. Lewis formed the unions. My dad then got the job of being a weigh master when the coal carts came across the scale to record how much weight the miner had dug, see. He could not belong to the union because he was the weigh master for the company, and the union didn’t trust that he would record the weight correctly, because he was a company man. So, they had their own weigh guy, and he would sit besides my dad and read the scales and do the same thing he did. There was a lot of distrust between the union and the ownership of the mines. If it was a company man reading the scales, he could fudge the numbers, and not pay the miners for it—he could do that. But my dad didn’t do that. He read the scales just like it said. So then they went on strikes and the unions had some money and bonds that they saved up over a period of time, and they provided once a week, food at a food bank to the union members. My dad wasn’t eligible, we weren’t eligible for that, because he was not a union member, he couldn’t be a union member because he was a company man so to speak. Not like he was an executive or something, he was just a miner like everybody else.
Garvin: Did that cause any animosity? Were people angry with him? Did he still get along with everybody?
King: There was a lot of stress. The union coming in brought a lot of stress. At one point my dad, he wore a lot of riding pants and boots. And he walked to work, it was five or six miles to work, and the nearest way was to walk through a railroad tunnel. It was shorter then walking the road see, he wore riding pants and he had a rubber hose about three feet long, two and a half to three feet long and he filled [it] with lead. And he carried that down in his pant leg, with a hole in his pocket. So that he could have his hand on that lead-filled hose if he was assaulted in the tunnel or whatever, it was a very stressful time, a very very stressful time.
Garvin: Did anyone ever assault him?
King: No. no. But he had that as self-defense. My dad was not an aggressive person. But there was so much stress and so much hassle going on between the miners, the owners, and the mines, and the union, and those that weren’t union people, it was a difficult time. So in essence we were glad to get away from all that. Glad to get away from all that, it was 1939.
Garvin: And so was your moving partly caused by the Great Depression?
King: Oh absolutely! No questions about it. You couldn’t make a living anymore, and it was a tough time. Money was in very short supply, very short supply. The company owned the company store and they owned the store where you bought your groceries, and--do you remember Tennessee Ernie Ford?
Garvin: Yes.
King: Did you ever hear of him?
Garvin: Yes.
King: He sang, he sang and wrote a song, it was “I owe my soul to the company store,” basically it had to do with the plight of miners who earned their living at the company, and they bought their groceries at the company, and their company was all they had, you know. It was a difficult time, very difficult. So in a sense of the worry, it was a relief to get away from all that. Go back to the farm, well he [Marvin King’s father] grew up on a farm. But I have not grown up on a farm. So it was quite a change for me. I left my friends, I traded my girlfriend, and moved back to Virginia.
Garvin: So you ended up moving to Virginia, and so how did you end up meeting your wife?
King: She was a sophomore in high school, and I was a senior. One of her friends was having a birthday party, and I got invited to the party, and I am the new kid on the block, and I got invited and I met her, and we decided that year that one day we were going to be married. She was a sophomore and I was a senior.
Garvin: So what year was this?
King: I graduated in 1940, she graduated in 1942.
Garvin: Okay.
King: So we were very close--and that sounds like an early decision to make. A senior and a sophomore deciding one day that we were getting married {both laughing}. It took a while, but we did.
Garvin: So World War II was going on for about two years before the United States got involved. Do you know what the general opinion of Japanese and the Germans were, during that time before the U. S. got involved? Were people talking about that much?
King: Well I had a good friend of mine that lived in the country. He had a fairly wealthy aunt and uncle that lived in Florida. And they had him come down and stay with them and come to Florida, and go to the University of Florida. And he came back to the Virginia area, therefore we were, in the summertime for his summer, and I got acquainted with him, and he talked to me about going to the University of Florida. So, to make a long story short, I did go to the University of Florida, and to try and further my education.
Garvin: This is 1940? Or 1941?King: Well, I was at the University of Florida when Pearl Harbor came.
Garvin: Okay.
King: And that ended that. I finished the school year, and people my age were subject to the draft, we knew the time would come when you were going to be serving, you know. So I finished that one year of college and came home. And I had some odd jobs around there. You couldn’t get a meaningful job because you were subject to the draft. So if he gave you a job that required some training, and this kind of thing. Then you didn’t know when Uncle Sam was going to say “you are it.” So I just messed around there for a while and I finally decided if I was going into the military, I would do something I would choose to do, as opposed to just being drafted. So I enlisted in the air corps.
Garvin: So we will definitely bring that back up of course, but I want to know what your college experience was? I know you only went for a year, but did you enjoy it?
King: You mean after school and before I went into the army?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Well at one [clears throat]--one job I had was night manager of a small restaurant. That sounds like a big title.
Garvin: {laughs}.
King: But it was a narrow restaurant, about fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long {shows dimensions of restaurants with hands using a notepad}. More or less hotdogs, hamburgers, they did fix breakfast and stuff. I was the night manager, which means I was only guy there from seven at night to seven in the morning [chuckling].
Garvin: Wow!King: It was a twelve hour shift. I worked seven at night to seven in the morning. And whenever I was not fixing food or something, I mopped the floors, did the dishes, and those kinds of things. And then I later found out about a job. I had a cousin in Richmond, Virginia, and I went down there, and I got a job working in an office. I took typing in high school, and I could type, and that made me qualified [both chuckle] to work in an office down there for a trucking company. And I worked down there for a while. And so then like I said, I finally decided, well, I will just enlist in something that I want to do, and I chose the army –they called it the army air corps at that time, not the air force, but the army air corps. I wanted to be a pilot. So I was ordered to report for duty in Richmond, Virginia on the 19th of February, 1943. Two days before that, Louise and I decided we would get married.
Garvin: And how was that--how did this come about? Did you guys--I know you guys were going out for a while, Did your families support it? Did you guys go to the town center or did you guys go to a church?
King: You mean, did they support the marriage?
Garvin: Yes.
King: They did not know it. We made, when I say it wasn’t like a spur of the moment. We had thought over the two years past that we loved each other, we wanted to have a life together, and I was going away to the military, just looking back on it, I said if one of my girls had done that, I would have hung him up by a rope.
Garvin: [laughs].
King: Such a bad decision. But you know, marry a guy and he is off to the army. I mean it--it was not a mature decision. But we loved each other and we wanted to make that commitment. So we eloped. So we went to the next county, and--Garvin: And this is in Virginia?
King: In Virginia, and we got a license and we were married. Her parents did not know it until later, she was in college at Radford, Virginia. She was in college herself. So we pulled it off, and it was a pretty sad farewell. I left the next day for military service--the day after we were married on the seventeenth, and I left on the eighteenth, and reported to Richmond, Virginia.
Garvin: And we are going to get right into Richmond, Virginia in a second, but I just want to know if you remember exactly where--if you know what you were doing on Pearl Harbor, on December 7?
King: Well, we checked in down there and were sworn in, and they put us on a troop train and sent us to Miami Beach, Florida for training. We got on a train and we had bagged meals, it was not a sleeper, just a coach. And that was a long trip to Florida.
Garvin: So I just want to know, do you remember where you were during Pearl Harbor? Do you remember what you were doing?
King: Well, I was at the University of Florida when Pearl Harbor occurred. Overall horrified of course—you know horrified. It was unbelievable.
Garvin: What were you feeling at that time?
King: Well, your country has just been attacked by a foreign government. You could imagine--you have to imagine since you weren’t there. I mean it was horrific, the idea that we would be attacked like that by the Japanese. There was a great rallying cry of support throughout the country. The current war that has been going on these years now in Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth, has not produced the amount of support, widespread across the country, there have been a lot of criticisms of it and I am not taking sides but one way or another. I am just saying that thing happened at Pearl Harbor and the Americans came together as if one voice. The support for that war is simply unbelievable, unbelievable. The armed forces were supported in every way by the people, and the whole country was behind the war effort. We had been attacked and so as it turned out I was going to be--I didn’t know what role I was going to play. But I decided if I was going to serve I wanted to be a pilot. Just enlisting for air corps, it was the air corps then, army air corps, just enlisted and to have the desire to be a pilot didn’t mean you were signed up the first day to be a pilot. That was my goal.
Garvin: Can you go into the training of what your basic training was for the air force and your whole experience, the whole training and getting there?
King: Oh yes. We got on a train in Richmond, Virginia and we had bagged lunches for three days. It took a third day to get into Miami Beach. They told us not to bring any clothes, just your toilet articles. That you would have a uniform issued when you got there. So we ate the bagged meals for three days in getting to Miami Beach, Florida. And we got off the train at about two in the morning and civilian clothes on of course. Most of us were already home sick, you know. There we were at two in the morning and we had a first lieutenant who met the train there. I remember his name to this day. His name was Lieutenant Saltzen.
Garvin: How do you spell that?
King: I think it was, S-A-L-T-Z-E-N or something like that. He was strictly military. He had his visor over his cap two fingers above his nose here [Mr. King demonstrates a cap being two finger lengths above his nose]. Steely eyed guy, shoulders back, gut in. We’re all bedraggled, homesick guys here, on a train for three days, already homesick. Tired, sleepy, hungry. We got off like a bunch of bedraggled ne’er-do-wells, and this lieutenant showed up and he said, “Men, I am Lieutenant Saltzen,” he says “You’ve been on the train for three days and nights, you are tired and worn out. My job is to get you off your feet and into the beds for some much needed rest, and I intend to do that job. And at four o’clock this morning,” just two hours later, “My job will be to get you off your feet and on your feet, and I intend to that job.” And he did. Bugle blew at four o’clock in the morning and we got in the bed at two o’clock. Four o’clock in the morning we were on our feet. Welcome to the military, you know. And it was a tough time. Unfortunately, the uniforms were not there for us when we got there. It was two weeks before we got any uniforms. So we were wearing our civilian clothes for two weeks learning close order drills {clears throat], taking calisthenics, and all this kind of stuff. So it was like “welcome to the military.” And it was very disappointing for most of us, but we got through it. We stayed in a first hotel by the way, on Miami Beach, I mean, as a civilian, it was top drawer, first class. But the military had removed all of the furniture, and had taken up the carpets in the lobby, and the halls, and the rooms. So it was concrete floors, steel bunks, that was it. I don’t know what they had done with all the lush furnishing they had, probably stored it. So it was bare bones. So we took military training, close ordered drills, calisthenics, physical training. And it was a rough beginning.
Garvin: And this is in Miami?
King: Miami Beach.
King: Of course, you got the inoculations and stuff, and--he was going to use the term “whip everyone into shape,” I mean we were all young guys, not military by trade. And they were getting everyone into shape. We had close-ordered drills, very high tech, high demanding physical training, running two miles a day and taking exercises, and getting in shape. And I wondered what does that have to do with flying an airplane.
Garvin: [laughs}.
King: That had to come later.Garvin: Did a lot of people make it through? Did a lot of people drop out?
King: Well, I would not be aware of the numbers. I don’t know what they would do with you if you could not cut the mustard, whether they would discharge you or what. Or send you to the infantry, I don’t know. But I do remember that they were very strict on orders. The whole thing “was an order is to be followed,” period. They were indoctrinating you from laissez-faire, laid back, high school students into this military [regiment], see. That didn’t bother me. That didn’t bother me. There were people who wouldn’t feel too well in the morning because they were not looking forward to the day’s activities, so they would say they weren’t feeling well. And they would need to go to the infirmary, but what they did, all those people that said they weren’t feeling well, need to go to the infirmary. They sent them down to the lobby of the hotel and it was about ten o’clock before the ambulance showed up to haul them in. They weren’t out, out, but that is how they transported them. During that two hour period that those people that reported they were sick were assigned to scrub the floors of the hotel with scrub brushes.
Garvin: Wow [both laugh]!
King: It was a concrete floor. All the carpeting was up, see, barebones. So some of them got to feel better right away [both laugh}. You know what I am saying?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Somebody was kind of wanting to goof off a little bit, see? But the military sees through that kind of stuff. So anybody that was too sick to report for drill that day was given the job of scrubbing the floor. But it was two weeks before we got our uniforms. So it was tough, but we had enlisted in the air corps. So far all you were doing was close order drills, calisthenics, and stuff like that.Garvin: And after the basic training, how did you do--what did you do for the training for the flying?
King: OK. They sent us up to Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. And the gymnasium at that school, all of that had been converted over, taken over I guess, by the military. What was a humongous, big gymnasium, was converted into sleeping quarters. We had bunks that were like three high, row after row after row after row. And that is where we slept, and of course we eat, they fixed the meals up there. And we had revelry at six o’clock in the morning. They had a P.A. system hooked up in there and a bugle on a recorder I guess, and like at five thirty in the morning the bugle would blast off in the sound system in the auditorium, the gymnasium and get you up, you had five minutes to get outside. This is a funny story. It was cold, it was winter time, and it was cold! So some of the guys would dismiss you after a quick roll call, and then one guy would report “all accounted for sir,” and dismiss us, and you could go back in. So some guys decided they wanted to go back in and take a little extra cat nap. So what they would do, is put their overcoats and their shoes on, long overcoats and shoes, and go out to be there for the check, see? To report in, and when they would say “dismiss,” they would go back in and get a little nap. Well, you don’t fool these sergeants. Take my word for it. He was on to that, so one morning we stood out there at attention, really a very cold morning. He said “okay men, I want all of you take your overcoats off, drop them at your feet.”
Garvin: [laughs].
King: Well needless to say [laughs], the guys that were in their underwear, were not only a little bit embarrassed, but freezing, too. And the sergeant never said a word about anybody not being dressed, he just had you stand at attention for about ten minutes [both laugh]. Never said a word about it, never chewed anybody out, they just had ten minutes, and he would say, “OK, dismissed.” Well, needless to say, after that nobody ever went out without their coat on [both laughing]. That was a funny story. But there then we went to fly Piper Cubs. Taught us to fly our very first flight thing. We have been in several months now, and we thought we are finally going to get around to what we came here to do. So we took training in Piper Cubs. We were there for a while, then they sent us down to San Antonio, Texas. It was a classification center. You went down there for interviews and physicals, and this kind of stuff. You made known what your desire to do would be. You might be a pilot, you may be could be a navigator. So I indicated a desire to be a pilot, and they gave me some tests and all this kind of stuff.
Garvin: What did those tests entail?
King: What?
Garvin: Do you remember what those tests entailed?
King: No. No. I don’t remember, they just questioned you a lot, and some of you, some--then of course part of it depended on their need. If they didn’t need pilots as much as they needed navigators, you may have enlisted to fly an airplane, but you might end up being a navigator. So fortunately I got my choice of being a pilot. So then we went to Coleman, Texas. A small cow town in the heart of Texas, and we flew PT 13’s. It is a single engine, open cockpit, airplane. And we had already flown in the Piper Cubs. And we went to single engine PT--PT 19’s I believe, PT 19’s, single engine, open cockpit, two seats, one behind the other. And we had civilian instructors teaching us how to fly, and my instructor was Mr. Gobble, like a turkey gobble, Mr. Gobble. And we flew, took lessons, several flights up and around and around.
Garvin: Do you know what you feeling the first time you were in--the first flight that you took?
King: My feeling? Oh I was excited! I loved it.
Garvin: You weren’t nervous at all?King: No. No. I loved it. And, So anyway, we landed, the field had a limited number of landing strips on it, so they rented, leased some land from farmers in the area. So we learned to take off on these flat farm fields out there. And there would be five or six instructors with their students out there and taking, flying around, had like an air pattern up there. These instructors would stretch back onto a tree and have their coffee or whatever while their guys were--while the others were teaching, see. Finally, one day we landed and Mr. Gobble said to me, “You got it.” I said “what does that mean?” He said, “you take off, single, by yourself.” First solo flight.
Garvin: Wow.
King: And of course you are all nervous about it. So I said, “OK,” so I got into the plane and took off and made a nice takeoff, circling around up there, and he is watching from under the tree. And all the other instructors are all watching their guys. Came in, made an absolute beautiful landing, touched down just as smooth as silk, come down through the farm field there, the grass field, and all at once that thing went into a tailspin on the ground. Just like this, around and around and around [makes circler motion with his pointer finger on the table]. And a cloud of dust came up and the engine died. So here comes Mr. Gobble across the field there, and I said to myself, they called it washing out when you didn’t make the grade, you washed out. And you went to the infantry, see. I said “Man, I messed up here, messed up here.” Mr. Gobble came over, he said “give me the crank.” You cranked those engines by hand to start them from outside the plane of course. He said, “give me the crank,” he said, “you are going again,” I was grateful for that. I thought maybe he would say “You are out of here.” He cranked it up, took off, and went around, made another beautiful landing, came in, ground looped the airplane again. In a big cloud of dust.Garvin: [laughs]. King: He told me afterwards, “look, what happened is you thought when you wheels touched the ground that you thought it was all over, that was just the beginning of the landing. Until that plane comes to a stop, you have to maintain control of it.” So he said, “You probably took your feet off the rudders, and a wind came along, and blew the tail surface over, and the plane spun around. Keep your feet on the rudders until the plane rolls to a complete stop. You are still in control of that airplane until it stops.” “Just touching down, that is not all over then, see?” I said, “yes sir,” went up, came back, make a long story short, I ground looped it a second time. I just knew then that I am out of here, I mean man, I am gone. He says “give me the crank,” He cranked it again and said “go and remember what I told you, keep your feet on the rudders until the plane stops rolling.” Next time I came in, I made a perfect three point landing and rolled to a stop. It was great.
Garvin: Wow!
King: Took a breath of relief in because you know I thought I failed, but he was a good guy. I guess he recognized that I had some potential. Anyway, we finally finished that training, and they sent us up to, I can’t think of the name of the town in Texas, and we flew closed cockpit planes up there, more powerful engines, larger airplanes, BT-13. It was a BT-13, closed cockpit. And we learned that [clears throat], then they ask you to make a choice between what you wanted to be, a single engine or a multi-engine aircraft. They were basically fighter pilots or bombers. And I chose multi-engine, I wanted multi-engine aircraft. I don’t know why, I just wanted a bigger airplane. So, they sent me to Dodge City, Kansas. We learned to fly--wait a minute, I am ahead of the story. Before we did that, I went to twin engine, twin engine trainer planes, and learned to fly twin engine planes. Then they sent me to B-26 training in Dodge City, Kansas. A B-26 Martin Marauder. And so I took the training there, oh by the way I graduated from this second two engine thing in ’44.
Garvin: OK, ’44.
King: I went in, in February, ’43, and this was April ’44. I was class 44D. Forty-four was the year, D was the fourth month. January through March, 44D. And I got my wings and a commission as a second lieutenant. And I got my first leave, my first leave, mind you I went in, in February, ’43 and it was April ’44 before I ever had an overnight pass.
Garvin: And your wife at this time was in Virginia…
King: She followed me wherever I went.
Garvin: Oh really?
King: Bless her heart.
Garvin: What was that like for her?
King: Well, it was difficult, it was difficult. She was in college at the time we got married but she finished that year. She came up to Indianapolis once to visit me, and needless to say by that time her family had recovered from her announcement that we had gotten married.
Garvin: [laughs]. King: I left town before they had gotten the word. That is just as well, I figured her father would be after me [both laugh]. Bless her heart, she came up to Indianapolis, stayed a few days, and then she joined me down in San Antonio. And each time I moved, she would move. We were not supposed to let them know, anybody know, you weren’t even supposed to have family with you for that matter. We didn’t have a lot to say about that. We kept quiet about that. So I would go to a news station and I would call her and tell her where we were. She would get on a bus and come to Coleman, Texas, a little cow town down there. She rented--she and another wife--well I am getting ahead of my story. When I went to San Antonio for classification, she came down, and I had met a chaplain there, got to know him quite well, and he had known some people in Virginia. As it turns out, he had stopped by my wife’s farm at one time.
Garvin: Really?
King: Yeah, coincidence. And he said “Mo and I have an extra bedroom,” he said, “your wife and her friend can stay at our house.”
Garvin: Wow.
King: And so they stayed at the chaplain’s house. But then when we got moved, they had to go ahead and find a place to stay. Try and find a job. She had jobs at different things.
Garvin: Do you know what she did?
King: Well, at the last place in Lubbock, she worked at a drug store that served breakfast and stuff in it too. She was a waitress at the drug store, across the street from the Hilton Hotel. So she had a job there, she was a trooper I’ll tell you, I always was indebted to her. She tramped around all over the country to be with me, when she never had an overnight pass until I got a commission. Can you believe that?
Garvin: Wow. So that is over a year of training?
King: Oh yeah, we had half a day on Saturday or Sunday, but not both. You had to be back by four o’clock and of course they gave no consideration to you being married because your family is not supposed to be with you in the first place.
Garvin: How often did you see her?
King: How often did I see her?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Either on Saturday or a Sunday, not both. Garvin: Okay.
King: Once I got a commission of course, it was okay then. But during the cadet training, that was it. You could take a bus into San Antonio for the afternoon. If you missed the bus, the next week you didn’t get to go in at all. It was military training at its peak. In cadet training--they would come in, to inspect the barracks. Everybody had rows of cots. Your clothing had to be hung in a certain order, your first class uniforms, your shirts, your pants, all the buttons on every garment had to be buttoned. It didn’t matter that you gotta unbutton them to put them on
Garvin: [laughs].
King: I mean that was it. Your shoes had to be polished and laced up. The ones that you left under your bunk had to be laced up. Of course, you had to unlace them to get them on, but that neither here nor there. All of this was part of discipline, and taking orders, and following orders. At the time that is what it was. Learn to obey an order, when you are given an order, you don’t question why, you are to do or die. Right? And they would inspect your barracks. The guy would drop a fifty cent piece on the top cover of your blanket there and if it didn’t bounce up, meaning if that bed cover wasn’t stretched tight, then you would get a demerit for that. If you had a shirt hanging up besides your bed and you didn’t have every button on it buttoned, that is a demerit. That is a demerit for each button that isn’t buttoned. If your shoes aren’t polished and laced, then that is a demerit. And they would assign you a demerit for that. For each demerit that you got, you had to walk the ramp with the backpack, one hour for each demerit. And if you owed any demerits, you owed any walking, then you didn’t go in town on the weekends, for that one day, half a day. The demerits, you had to walk them off. All of that is part of discipline, do what you’re told, when you’re told, how you’re told, how often you are told, don’t question authority, you just do it!Garvin: So I am guessing you were very good about buttoning it up and polishing.
King: I never got a demerit. If you failed to salute a superior officer you--well all officers were superior, we were enlisted, we were buck privates. If you failed to [salute], he would say to you “take two,” and you would go to the orderly and report to Lieutenant so and so as giving you two demerits and put it on the chart, see? You had like six or eight a week that you were allowed freebies, after that you walked the ramp for an hour for every demerit. It all was part of discipline, do what you are told, when you are told, how you are told. Do not question authority. You know, I mean does that make sense to you?
Garvin: Yes it does.
King: So no matter what, later on in life if your.
Garvin: It prepares you for combat…
King: If you are given an order, you carry it out. So finally we graduated, got our wings, got a commission as a second lieutenant, and got our uniforms for the first time, this had been from February of one year to April of the following year. What fourteen months?
Garvin: Was there a ceremony or anything?
King: Yeah. Fairly low key, but you know.
Garvin: Was your wife able to be there?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Hey, I am a commissioned officer now, she can be wherever she wants to be.
Garvin: {laughs}.
King: And then the question of where are you going to go from here? Well, they sent us to--oh by the way we got a leave, and hadn’t had any leave at the time in the thirteen months, no leave time, we got a two week leave to Virginia, where our families were, and they thought we were pretty first class because I had a uniform, and she had worked, and bought herself some new clothes. They thought we were very successful, which we were at that point. But it didn’t come easy, it was a long, drawn out affair. And so they sent us to Dodge City, Kansas, where we learned to fly B-26’s, Martin Marauders. We couldn’t find a place to live there. Housing was hard to come by, we finally rented a basement, now I don’t mean a basement apartment, I mean we rented a basement that had a bed in it.
Garvin: Someone’s house…
King: And an icebox, block ice that you put in it, and a concrete floor, and you hung your clothes over the rafters on nails up there. But it was all the housing that you could find. We loved it, we had our own place. The coal bin was in the basement too, and they brought a load of coal and dumped that in the basement, and a cloud of coal dust would come all over you. We loved it, because we had our own place [both laugh]. It was pretty simple but we loved it. So we learned to fly B 26’s there.
Garvin: How long were you there?
King: I don’t remember the time, but from there we went to Lake Charles, Louisiana. And, then we went to Barksdale field and Shreveport. So we flew, still training and flying those.
Garvin: How was the training different from the other planes that you flew?
King: How was the training different? Well, the other planes were fairly small planes. You are looking at a twin engine bomber, and by the way it was made by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore. Martin Marauder, that was the forerunner I think of Martin Marietta, which is now the company--this is what the B-26 looked like [goes over to a table nearby and picks up a model replica of the B-26 he flew in which was made by a neighbor].
Garvin: Oh, wow!--And where were you stationed in that [referring to model plane}?King: Well, we finished the training with the B-26’s, down there they put crews together, you have to have a pilot, a copilot, and a bombardier. They are all commissioned officers. Most of us were second lieutenants, some of them were flight officers, second lieutenants. You had three enlisted men, you had a radio gunner, and the armorer gunner, and the engineer gunner [Pointing at the front, middle, and back of plane]. They all--the gunners, see you had tail guns here, machine guns here, machine guns here, then this would slide the door back here, and you would have machine guns here on this side, and tail guns [Mr. King is pointing at the tail, side and under the wings, and next to the doors in the back respectively when describing the placement of the guns]. And there were two guns mounted on the side of the fuselage that the pilot could fire. And so, the engineer gunner, in addition to being a gunner, he had to deal with the engine and the engineering part of the play. The armorer gunner, he had to do with the bombs, uploading the bomb ammunition, and this kind of stuff. And the radio gunner of course was the communication guy. So we had three enlisted men and three officers. And so we trained together as a crew. We had one mishap. We were flying from Lake Charles, Louisiana to Barksdale Field in Shreveport. And as we landed, see all these planes have retractable landing gear, just like the airliners do, and as we landed, the landing gear folded up, into the nousel here, and the wing came and hit the ground like this [showing one wing on model airplane touching ground, while other wing is up in the air], we are going down a runway like this, and sparks are flying everywhere. We managed to bring--it slid off the runway over here towards some parked aircraft, but it didn’t hit them. It was a little scary kind of thing there. Nobody got hurt. I don’t know what happened there. When the gear comes down, there is a pin that fires behind it, a pin so that it can’t close up, and it is a safety feature because hydraulics bring it down and up, see? But something there, the pin misfired or something, and let the gear close up on it. And when this wing hit the ground sparks were flying everywhere you know. So we all bailed out, because you can get out of this cockpit up here, out here over the top. So everyone bailed out, and there was an instructor pilot with us, and he was in the right seat, and I was flying the airplane, we all jumped off the plane to the ground, and he fractured his ankle when he hit the ground, but it wasn’t from the crash itself.
Garvin: So you were piloting?
King: Yeah I was piloting.
Garvin: Oh, wow!
King: Yeah.
Garvin: Well, great job landing that {both laugh}.
King: Well, that was kind of scary, needless to say when these props {propellers} hit the ground, hit the pavement, sparks are flying everywhere. You can imagine, I mean sparks are flying everywhere because the plane is like this down the runway [one wing against the ground again]. It was kind of scary.
Garvin: I have gotten the impression that a lot of air force people--like they named their planes. Did you ever name your plane?
King: No. It had the name when we got it.
Garvin: Do you know what it was called?
King: Bad Penny.
Garvin: Oh so this is--right there where you wrote the name? [pointing at name under cockpit in model plane]
King: Yeah. A resident here in town, in Homewood, put this together for me.
Garvin: Oh wow. King: And he put Bad Penny—and this was the number of my plane, see? {points to numbers on top of rudder}
Garvin: Oh wow.
King: Yeah. So he personalized it and put Bad Penny there on it see…
Garvin: That looks great.
King: And underneath it said “Bad Penny, it always turns up.”
Garvin: [Laughs].
King: Ha. That is what was what written on it {laughs}. They had a lot of funny names on planes.
Garvin: And so when you are in Louisiana, this is about mid 1944?
King: I graduated in ’44 so--yeah well, it took several months of training in the B-26, several months of training. And then, finally the time came to go overseas. So they sent us up to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. And all the people going to Europe, of course, left out of New York, the port of New York.
Garvin: So you were going to Europe?
King: We went up there and your wife wasn’t even supposed to know where you were, let alone meet you, but she came up. I told her anyways. She came up, she got a room in a boarding house up there. But we could only get in town about every three days or something. You had passes you know, you couldn’t come in everyday. So she was there. Just found a room with a lady up there. So, the guys who didn’t have any family up there, which most of us--we weren’t supposed to have any family up there. I would borrow their pass and I would go into town. We went into New York to see some Broadway shows a couple of times while I was waiting.
Garvin: Anything really good?King: I don’t even remember the name of them now. You are talking, what? 1944…
Garvin: What this a big surprise for you, you know since you grew up in West Virginia? Going to New York City and New Jersey?
King: Well, I was an old country boy getting used to the big city. Of course, some of these places we lived in Texas were just small towns, like Coleman had one traffic light in it.
Garvin: [laughing]
King: San Anjelos, Lubbock, Lubbock big city, anyway she came--I told her “Louise, I can’t be in touch with you so anytime that you haven’t heard from me two days in a row, you know we’re gone, we’re gone.” So I went in a couple times. I went into New York to see a couple shows and the word could come at anytime, so when the word came down, and we had to pack it in and head up to the port of New York, and so she knew after two days that I was gone.
Garvin: Do you know when this is about? Do you know what date this is about?
King: This would have been, I guess this would have been in January, 1945. I graduated April 1944, and had all this training see, so January ’45. So we got on the Queen Mary, at that time it was the largest ship afloat, the largest ship in the world.
Garvin: Wow.
King: There were six thousand crew and people on that ship, and it only took us five days to cross the Atlantic Ocean to get over there. We had no escort. Most troop ships had escort vessels to fight off submarines.
Garvin: The U-boats and everything.
King: They said this ship is so fast that there is no German submarine that can catch it, the only way they could catch is if by pure chance they intercept it out on the ocean somewhere. It would be pure chance. Otherwise, you can outrun anything. No vessel is to accompany it over there. We stayed, we landed over there, and stayed in--where did we land? Scotland, or somewhere over there, and we were there a few days and they sent us over to France, to airstrip A-72, which was about 90 miles northeast of Paris. Small, rural, French town. A little town named Saint Catan. And coincidentally, I couldn’t tell him where we were, but after the war was over, I told my dad where we were, and it turns out that he had been in the area in World War I as an infantrymen.
Garvin: Your dad served in World War I?
King: Yeah. Yeah. He was a veteran of World War I.
Garvin: That is amazing.
King: So we flew out of there, and the war was nearing an end, and I didn’t get in full time [Meaning he didn’t serve the amount of missions needed to go home]. I flew twenty-seven missions over Germany, and kept the same crew the whole time. A good crew. And it was quite an experience. We had some successful flights, we dropped some bombs on railroad yards, and factories. We did a lot of what they called strategic bombing, we weren’t bombing troops or something like that. The effort the airforce was making was to destroy the enemy’s capabilities to make war. If you blow up their oil refineries, they can’t produce gas. If you blow up ball bearing factories, then can’t get parts for tanks and all this stuff. It was strategic bombing to destroy their capabilities of making war. So we destroyed a lot of places like railroad yards, bridges, they called them B-26, “bridge busters.”
Garvin: [Laughing].
King: If you got a bridge across a river, a big river, and it is fifty miles away from another bridge, you have impaired the ability of their ground forces to move tanks and troops across the river. You take those bridges out. They called them the “bridge busters.” Bridges, ammunition factories, oil refineries, railroad yards. The first bunch that come in, you might have a railroad yard that is 20 tracks across, then they narrow down towards the ends, the siding, so that they can move in at about two rails. The first bunch in would drop bombs at the entrance to that railroad yard, and the second bunch here {draws second wave of bombers dropping bombs on trains, not entrance like first wave}, because they start taking off when they see an air raid about to happen. They pull all their stuff out of there.
Garvin: Did you guys ever get--was there a lot of anti-aircraft fire?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We had some bullets holes and--
Garvin: Wow.
King: Oh yeah. Well anti-aircraft fire and fighter pilots. The Germans had a few fighter pilots up there. Of course it was up to these guys with the guns to take them out.
Garvin: Was it ever really a close call? Did they ever get really close to maybe shooting you down?
King: Well, we were never disabled, we had some holes here and there, but we never did that--that Martin Marauder, the Bad Penny, that was the name of it. We never had to abort and come back.
Garvin: Did everyone on your crew make it back safely?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know sometimes we had to change a target if the weather was so bad that the target--you might get the word to go to an alternate target, instead of that target. These were not as big as like the B-24’s and B-17’s, they were all four engines, we were twin engines. And so let me make some point very clear here. I did not then, and I do not now, consider myself as any kind of a hero. I simply drove the plane. I drove the plane over there and back. That was it. We never did anything spectacular. We just did what we were told to do. You got some awards, air medals and stuff like that, but that was across [the board]. Everybody got those. I mean there is nothing unusual about--I am just another fly boy, that is all, just like most of us were.
Garvin: Well, I can just say, it means a lot. I think it means a lot, even to people today.
King: It is just like anybody who has had a job. If you were a clerk in a grocery store, you went everyday and you did your job, you came home, and that is what you did. Excuse me. [Mr. King at this point gets up and grabs a glass case containing his medals, awards, and wings] This is the air medal, if you flew five combat missions, you got an air medal, and for each additional five you flew, you got a cluster to go on the air medal. So first, this strip would start at five missions, then ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. I had twenty-seven missions that we flew--there is the dog tag. You know what dog tags are don’t you?
Garvin: Wow. Yeah.
King: And these are my wings. Those are actually the first ones I had. In the meantime I got promoted to first lieutenant and then later they gave me a terminal leave promotion to captain. That is meaningless because I was getting out anyway. I don’t even know why they did that. Oh, so the war is over.
Garvin: So Hitler is killed [suicide] in his bunker, so then V-Day comes, so do you know where you were…
King: That is where we were when the war ended, we were still at the airstrip in France.
Garvin: Do you know what you were feeling at that time?
King: What can you say? The war is over.
Garvin: Were you a little bit surprised, or were you expecting it?King: We knew we had the upper hand. I guess selfishly you were hoping that you wouldn’t get blown away on the last mission or something {both laugh}. But obviously everybody is gratified that the war is over for obvious reasons. We are not going to lose any more people, the Germans are not going to lose any more people, and we are going to go home one of these days. But it was several months before we could come home. You stop and think about it, how many millions of American military people were overseas. The war ends okay, of course it was not over in.
Garvin: In Japan.
King: Yeah, Japan in the pacific. But you got to get all those people home. Well, it took years to get them all over there, and it is going to take a long time to get them home. What they did was, I don’t know how they did the ground troops, but the as far as the air force is concerned, you were given points for each month you spent overseas. That way, the people at the higher points, came home first, which is fair. If you had been there twelve months and you have another guy that has been there six months, then you don’t get the six month guy home first. It was fair, they had a point system. So each day the Stars and Stripes publication would show at what point level they were at now. As you gradually got down to where you were--it was fair, it was fair. But we were there a good while. After a good while when the war was over, what was it, May?
Garvin: Yes.
King: Well by the way, in the meantime my wife was working at a powder plant in Redford, Virginia. Where they were making munitions.
Garvin: So she moved back after you took off?King: Yes. And she worked in the employment office. And of course they continued there after the war was over in Europe, because they are still going in Japan. So, on the day that the war was over in Japan she worked in the employment office. So that morning she was filling out employment papers for people for manufacturing explosives there. So, that morning she was issuing papers to people being hired, when the word came that the war was over in Japan, she started issuing pink slips…
Garvin: [laughing].
King: Including her own. That was the last day, the day the war ended in Japan, the munitions plant shut down in Virginia.
Garvin: Wow!
King: She laughs, I was issuing papers to new employees up until12 o’clock, then she was typing up notices saying “you don’t have a job.” [laughing] Including her own, but it was for a good reason.
Garvin: For a good reason.
King: Everybody was happy that it was over.
Garvin: During this time while you were in Europe, did you keep in touch with her? Were you able to right letters?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That is the only way you can keep in touch. Excuse me a minute [Mr. King gets up at this point and goes over and grabs a photo album that includes war time photos]. During the time I was overseas. I kept a diary, just a small diary, and it was just like I was talking to her. And I told her what was going on in my mind in that particular day. And I kept that diary, and I brought it back. I kept it up through the time that the war was over. I told her that we had her baptism of fire one day. You flew six planes in a row [demonstrates where six planes were with hands], and you had a lead ship, one plane up here and one here. Then you had one lower, behind here, lower altitude, and two over here. Six planes in a box. When it had a maximum effort, just about every plane was in the air. I mean it was maximum. They put everything in the air that didn’t need maintenance or something. Those were boxes, and on one of the missions, I am flying here, and here is the lead plane, you got a guy up here, and we were here [Mr. King’s plane was to the left of the “guy up here”], this plane took a blast from anti-aircraft shells from the ground. This thing virtually exploded right then and there. And the guy, the rest of the crew, of course I couldn’t see anything except paying attention to my flying. They said there were no parachutes. So that meant that no one got to bail out. An anti-craft shell just hit the plane. Just took it right out of the sky. Just disintegrating. If you get disabled the plane is still losing altitude, but you can still bail out. Of course then you probably become a German prisoner of war, but this thing just simply exploded and disintegrated right debris--was flying all over the place. And I told Louise in my note that day, I had my baptism of fire that day, I had never seen anything like it. You don’t know what is going on in the other planes around you, but that one is right here. We had a flight leader, we were flying up here one day, he wanted you lapped in close, he wanted this wing overlapping his wing [Mr. King’s hands show that both wings are on top of one another]. And he said, “If you can’t read my engine oil temperature on my gauge, then you are too far out.”
Garvin: [Laughs]
King: But he would say it not literally, but if you can’t read the instruments on my instrument panel, then you are too far out. You want these wings lapping over like that. You could not take your eyes off of him flying. Because when he turned, he didn’t get on the radio and say turn, he just turned. So when he turned, you had to turn. If you didn’t, his wing would come up and hit your wing. You could hardly blink in tight formation again because all the six planes would go together. When he would go to drop the bombs, they would drop two thousand pounds of bombs out of each airplane. That is a lot of explosive, a lot of explosive. But he was a good flight leader and actually came back from overseas. I was in Greenville, South Carolina and going to a football game one night, and the war is over. And right ahead of me is this guy, who was the flight leader. He was going to college. This was a year later. But I came back from overseas and they gave me a job as a sales officer at the commissary. There is where they supply food stuff for military people, and supply the food to the mess hall to feed all the men. It was a desk job. I hated it. Desk job, I didn’t want any part of a desk job. But that is the way it was. Everybody had to have a ground oriented MOS, Military Occupational Specialty. So I was enlisted as a sales officer. I wanted to be a pilot. I didn’t join the air corps to sit behind a desk but they didn’t need any more pilots. What are you going to do? Somebody got to do the paperwork. But anyways, while I was at that job, the powers that be decided that everyone was going to take glider pilot training. Now, no one ever explained to me, not that they owed an explanation, but other than just keeping you busy, I don’t know why. Why do we want to become glider pilots? You know, the war is over, and besides I didn’t want any part of an airplane that didn’t have an engine on it. So first and only time I tried to get out of an assignment. I always took what they told me and did it to the best of my ability. But I didn’t want any part of flying a plane with no engine in it.
Garvin: [laughs].
King: I talked to my superior and he said, “I will take care of that for you,” like he is going to get me off of it. About a week went by, and I am at the desk, and the phone rings. An officer up at the line says “why aren’t you up here for glider pilot training?” “You were told to be here,” and I couldn’t say that that major so and so was going to take care of that. I just said, “yes sir.” I reported up there and took the glider pilot training. I asked him about it later and he said, “I tried to work out that deal, but I couldn’t get it for you.” Thanks a lot Pete[both laugh]! So I went up there and took glider pilot training.
Garvin: So.
King: That is the weirdest thing in the world to be up there, and unhooked from a tow plane, and you have no engine. You can only go one way.
Garvin: Yeah I remember, you know, on D-day when they had all those glider pilots flying in there and dropping off and everything.
King: Well, they stopped it before they got to the final thing. The thing was, the glider is sitting on the ground, and a cable coming across it hooks in front of the glider and a C-47 comes swooping in at low altitude with the cable and the hook. And grabs that cable and snatches that right off the ground.
Garvin: Wow.
King: See? It comes in with the hook and swoops in like that, and snatches the glider off the ground from a stand still position. Just about three days before I was scheduled for that, they stopped the program. I have never been so glad in my life [both laugh]!
Garvin: You were really nervous about it?
King: I don’t like flying an airplane can only go one way, and that is down [both laughing]. And we had night landings too, to make for those things.
Garvin: Wow.
King: They set up a row of Christmas trees. The idea was that you would unhook from a tow pole, and you were to come over that row of trees, get the glider on the ground and stop it before these trees. And as your training advanced, they moved those roves closer together. At night time they would use smudge pots, the same thing. It was a comic sighting thing but I didn’t care much for a plane that didn’t have an engine. You know what I mean?
Garvin: Yeah. So how long did you stay over Europe? Because you said you stayed over there a little bit longer?
King: About a year. I would say about a year. I think I came in January, and came back in December.
Garvin: OK.
King: The war was over in May?
Garvin: Yes May. And Japan was August.
King: Yes, August.
Garvin: And what was your reaction to the atomic bombs, and the whole couple of weeks leading up to the surrender. And then did you even know there was such a thing as an atomic bomb then. Did you hear a lot about it?
King: No. No. No. I don’t think most of the American people know about it, did they?
Garvin: No I don’t think so. It was a top secret.
King: Well obviously it was a sense of a relief. Almost even before the so called surrender, it was obvious that that would be the end of the war.
Garvin: Were you amazed by the sheer power of it?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I don’t know that I even knew that the atomic bomb existed and that they were working on it. I started to ask you if you knew, and you weren’t even a gleam in your parents’ eye {laughs}. But it was a good military experience. I think I learned a lot in the military. If I could have kept flying, I think I would have considered staying in. Of course, I might not have been allowed to. Lets face it, you have all these military people, and you don’t need them anymore. That desk job that I had, I didn’t like that. I just like to fly, I just like to fly.
Garvin: So you get back from the war, and where did you and your wife move too? Like, Virginia?
King: Well. I got a job with the Virginia department of highways, in Petersburg, Virginia. I applied for two jobs, one was to be a game warden, it is just something that came up [both laugh]. So I went to go work for the Virginia Department of Highways. I worked for them for a few years. And then I saw an ad in the paper for the Motors insurance corporation. It turned out it was from Generals Motors. They wanted someone with office experience. I was the office manager at the highway department, and it looked like a good thing to me to work for a larger company. So I applied for the job, and got it, it was in Richmond, Virginia. We lived in a town about twenty miles away, commuted. Then they transferred me from there to Roanoke, Virginia. They made me office manager at Roanoke, Virginia. About a hundred thousand population, about sixty miles from where we grew up. And I was there, and they transferred me. I wanted to get out from behind the desk. I was tired of paper work. They had a job as a claims adjuster, and they made me a claims adjuster. And then they transferred me to Washington D.C., and then we lived in Maryland at that time. And I finally retired after thirty years.
Garvin: And after you got out of the war, I just want to clarify something. Did you have any kids at this point, or was that after the war?
King: Children?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Our first child was born in 1947. We couldn’t have kids with me over there, and her over here [both laugh]. There is a lot they can do with trans-continental, but that is not one of them. [both laugh]. Our first son was born in 1947, and Mike, our second son was born in 1950. So we have two sons and two daughters.
Garvin: And did your parents stay in Virginia during the war? Did they move or anything?
King: No. No. They stayed there in Virginia. Of course, my dad ultimately retired and they have long since passed away.
Garvin: And just for clarification, when did you move to Pennsylvania?
King: Five years ago this August. So it has been four years and seven or eight months.
{Mr. King goes on to describe his retirement in Florida, but it is not included in this transcript}
Garvin: So, I guess my last question for you is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you would like to mention or any last thoughts you experienced before the war and during the war?
King: No. I guess not. Considering I didn’t have a college education and all, I still had a good job with G.M. {Mr. King goes on to describe his years at General Motors and his health over the years, but it is not included in this transcript}.
Garvin: I just thought of one more question to ask you. I kind of skipped over this and it is kind of a big, important date in World War Two history. Do you remember hearing about D-day, or did you know what that was all about?
King: Well, I was in a PT-13, closed cockpit airplane, in the second phase of my training, when D-day occurred. I picked it up on the radio. It was anticipated of course, the time was building up a crescendo of anticipation, and I was in the air, and flipped over to the radio and heard that D-day was on. We knew--we could not conceive of all that was about to happen, except this was the beginning of a momentous time in history.
Garvin: Did you even imagine the sheer size of the force that they assembled?King: I don’t know whether people out of the know, realized the volume--It was absolutely an incredible operation. Dwight D. Eisenhower of course was the head honcho of that whole thing. And of course it was with the corporation of Great Britain and the other allies too.
{Mr. King goes on to talk about subjects already covered earlier and his son-in-law, and are not included in this transcript}.
The End

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Special Collections
Musselman Library
Interview with
Marvin King
Interviewer: Shane Michael Garvin
Interview Date: March 28, 2009 An Oral History of Mr. Marvin King’s Life From Childhood Through World War II
Conducted By: Shane Michael Garvin
Professor Birkner
Historical Methods 300
April 1, 2009
Garvin: I am Shane Garvin from Gettysburg College, and I am here with Mr. Marvin King. I am in Hanover, Pennsylvania on March 28, 2009. And I guess Mr. King the first place to start is when and where were you born, and was it the same place that you grew up {Interview took place in House 166 at 425 Westminster Ave Hanover, PA 17331}?
King: I was born in a coal mining community in West Virginia (Born on April 30, 1922), In fact the name of the town was Coalwood.
Garvin: [laughs]
King: That was the name of it, in the southern part of West Virginia. My dad was a coalminer, and we lived there until I was a junior in high school. And during that time the depression was there. The mines would shut down, and got to be very difficult to make a living. So…
Garvin: Before we continue, can you tell us what your parents’ names were?
King: Tell you what?
Garvin: What your parents’ names were?
King: My dad’s name was Loman, L, O, M, A, N. And my mother’s name was Carolyn, but she was called Cally, always. Her maiden name was Morefeld, M, O, R, E, F, E, L, D. My dad was Loman David King. And they married, and I was born to them there in Coalwood, West Virginia. And as the depression got bad and all, we moved to Virginia, back to the family farm. My grandparents at that time were getting old, and so basically we moved back there, and my dad sort of took over running the farm in Virginia. And that is where I met my wife Louise. Garvin: Can you explain, before we move on to Virginia--can you explain what you remember about West Virginia? What your dad’s job was like?
King: Well, my dad was a coalminer as I said [clears throat], they didn’t have the safety features then that they now have. It was dangerous work, 680 feet down; it was a shaft mine, not a parallel [mine].
Garvin: Wow!
King: It was 680 feet deep. He took me down with him one time, and the men dug the coal by pick and shovel. They loaded it onto small little cars that were then towed out to where they called it “the cage.” It is an elevator, and the coal would get on the elevator, and they would take it up to the surface. And each coalminer got paid by the amount of coal that he dug. He got paid by the ton. And they would run these little cars across the scale, and each miner had a little round check, cab, with his number on it, and they would record number so and so had so many pounds of coal. And that is the way he got paid, by the amount of coal that he dug. But we moved. The depression came, and it was pretty bad, so like I said, we went to Virginia then. [We] lived on the farm which was my grandparents’ farm. His parents’ farm.
Garvin: And on the farm, what did you grow? What were the cash crops? Did you just have cow? And did you help? Or what--
King: Well, actually you sort of grew everything that you ate there. You didn’t ship the corn or the grain often. You just sort of made enough to live off of. We had milk cows and had horses. We didn’t have a tractor and stuff like that. We used horses to pull the plows and wagons, and stuff. And had raised chickens, so you got your eggs and your chicken, and raised hogs. So you they would kill hogs the following year, and you raised pretty much everything you needed. You didn’t need much cash input, you know.Garvin: Was it a very long day?
King: Well daylight to dark [both laugh]. It was hard work of course, you know-- they didn’t have a lot of the modern machinery they now have. We used horses to pull the plow as opposed to a tractor plow. I wouldn’t say it was primitive but it was the way you made a living back then. You would take your wheat to a mill about eight miles away and grind it and produce your flour. The miller would keep part of the wheat as compensation for grinding it up and making flour for you, see—that was his pay. He would keep, and so--
Garvin: So he would keep the wheat instead of actual cash?
King: Yeah, Yeah. It was rather primitive in a way, looking back on it, you know? We didn’t have a car, so we used horse and wagon. And, looking back on it, it was a tough time. But at the time we didn’t really realize it was tough. We were happy, you know, [we had] this little income and so forth. There was no dissention or anything. It was a very modest style of living. We ate healthy and lived healthy. And I went to high school there. The bus picks you up and takes you to the high school.
Garvin: Just to clarify, before we go any further, did you have any brothers or sisters?
King: No. I was an only child.
Garvin: Okay. And what were the name of the schools that you went to?
King: Well in Coalwood, West Virginia, it was the only school there, [it] was simply an elementary school.
Garvin: Okay.
King: And then later they had a junior high and high school in Welch, W, E, L, C, H. That was the county seat for Mcdowell County, West Virginia. And so I went to high school in Welch. Junior high and high school in West Virginia had twelve years of undergraduate work. You went to elementary school for six years and junior high school, seven and eight, and high school
for nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. So I went through the 11th grade, and I was a junior, that is
when I moved to Virginia. Which I found a little distressing at the time, all my friends were
there, you know…
Garvin: Of course.
King: You can imagine that, pack up and move somewhere else.
Garvin: Senior year especially.
King: You are going to grandpa’s and grandma’s place, and it was a great place to visit, but you
never thought about living there [both laugh].
Garvin: What did you do for fun growing up? Did you play sports, go to the movies, anything
like that?
King: There were no movies—I don’t want it to sound like a bad, bad thing, but we worked most
of the time. We really didn’t have much—maybe throw a ball and a bat a little bit, out in the
barn yard, or something like that. But [when] we got back from school, we had to raise the corn
and plow the garden, and pick the apples, and stuff like that. But I was not unhappy, strangely
enough. People say, “I would go crazy with that” but we didn’t have electricity in the home and
didn’t have a telephone. By today’s standards, pretty primitive, it was like it would be the pits
for young people today, How could you stand that?
Garvin: [laughs].
King: We accepted that because we had food on the table, loving parents, and friends at school.
Garvin: So you enjoyed your childhood and growing up years?
King: Enjoyed what?
Garvin: Your childhood and growing up years?
King: Oh childhood? Oh yeah, yeah. Simple games like marbles and jack rocks. Stuff like that. It was—I was very happy. I didn’t know any better [both laugh]. My parents and grandparents were very good to me. And I felt loved, and that is what counted, so it made a difference. But that is where I met my wife Louise when we moved to Virginia. See, I was a senior that year, she was a sophomore. We just—I don’t want to get ahead of the game, you tell me where you want to go from here.
Garvin: Actually, before we get to you and your wife, did you have—I think you already answered this, but did you have any others jobs besides helping your family?
King: Not through high school. Well, in my senior year I did drive a school bus. The students, seniors who had driving licenses, we drove the bus and you took it home with you at the end of the route.
Garvin: Wow[laughs}!
King: The next morning you made the route, picked up the kids and took them to school, and came back. And then I got a little bit, I forget what, it was very small pay for it, but I got a little bit better job of looking after the buses, that is taking them in to town for servicing and putting the gas in the tanks—I got to be a big shot [both laugh]! But the students drove the buses, of course we all were licensed drivers and took the course, and we drove the school buses, and you usually had someone who lived at the far end of the line, be the bus driver. He took the bus home with him, and in the morning he left, he started picking up everybody on the way to school. So...
Garvin: So you were the first one up? [laughing throughout question]
King: It was no big deal.Garvin: Of course you were young when the Great Depression first happened, but do you remember it well? Did it affect your family especially hard? Did you really even notice, or it was it the same?
King: Well, it was difficult. The coalmines were shut down one, two, or three days a week. And of course the miners got paid by the hour, or the coal they dug. And times were bad, and miners weren’t working. About that time the unions came in. John L. Lewis formed the unions. My dad then got the job of being a weigh master when the coal carts came across the scale to record how much weight the miner had dug, see. He could not belong to the union because he was the weigh master for the company, and the union didn’t trust that he would record the weight correctly, because he was a company man. So, they had their own weigh guy, and he would sit besides my dad and read the scales and do the same thing he did. There was a lot of distrust between the union and the ownership of the mines. If it was a company man reading the scales, he could fudge the numbers, and not pay the miners for it—he could do that. But my dad didn’t do that. He read the scales just like it said. So then they went on strikes and the unions had some money and bonds that they saved up over a period of time, and they provided once a week, food at a food bank to the union members. My dad wasn’t eligible, we weren’t eligible for that, because he was not a union member, he couldn’t be a union member because he was a company man so to speak. Not like he was an executive or something, he was just a miner like everybody else.
Garvin: Did that cause any animosity? Were people angry with him? Did he still get along with everybody?
King: There was a lot of stress. The union coming in brought a lot of stress. At one point my dad, he wore a lot of riding pants and boots. And he walked to work, it was five or six miles to work, and the nearest way was to walk through a railroad tunnel. It was shorter then walking the road see, he wore riding pants and he had a rubber hose about three feet long, two and a half to three feet long and he filled [it] with lead. And he carried that down in his pant leg, with a hole in his pocket. So that he could have his hand on that lead-filled hose if he was assaulted in the tunnel or whatever, it was a very stressful time, a very very stressful time.
Garvin: Did anyone ever assault him?
King: No. no. But he had that as self-defense. My dad was not an aggressive person. But there was so much stress and so much hassle going on between the miners, the owners, and the mines, and the union, and those that weren’t union people, it was a difficult time. So in essence we were glad to get away from all that. Glad to get away from all that, it was 1939.
Garvin: And so was your moving partly caused by the Great Depression?
King: Oh absolutely! No questions about it. You couldn’t make a living anymore, and it was a tough time. Money was in very short supply, very short supply. The company owned the company store and they owned the store where you bought your groceries, and--do you remember Tennessee Ernie Ford?
Garvin: Yes.
King: Did you ever hear of him?
Garvin: Yes.
King: He sang, he sang and wrote a song, it was “I owe my soul to the company store,” basically it had to do with the plight of miners who earned their living at the company, and they bought their groceries at the company, and their company was all they had, you know. It was a difficult time, very difficult. So in a sense of the worry, it was a relief to get away from all that. Go back to the farm, well he [Marvin King’s father] grew up on a farm. But I have not grown up on a farm. So it was quite a change for me. I left my friends, I traded my girlfriend, and moved back to Virginia.
Garvin: So you ended up moving to Virginia, and so how did you end up meeting your wife?
King: She was a sophomore in high school, and I was a senior. One of her friends was having a birthday party, and I got invited to the party, and I am the new kid on the block, and I got invited and I met her, and we decided that year that one day we were going to be married. She was a sophomore and I was a senior.
Garvin: So what year was this?
King: I graduated in 1940, she graduated in 1942.
Garvin: Okay.
King: So we were very close--and that sounds like an early decision to make. A senior and a sophomore deciding one day that we were getting married {both laughing}. It took a while, but we did.
Garvin: So World War II was going on for about two years before the United States got involved. Do you know what the general opinion of Japanese and the Germans were, during that time before the U. S. got involved? Were people talking about that much?
King: Well I had a good friend of mine that lived in the country. He had a fairly wealthy aunt and uncle that lived in Florida. And they had him come down and stay with them and come to Florida, and go to the University of Florida. And he came back to the Virginia area, therefore we were, in the summertime for his summer, and I got acquainted with him, and he talked to me about going to the University of Florida. So, to make a long story short, I did go to the University of Florida, and to try and further my education.
Garvin: This is 1940? Or 1941?King: Well, I was at the University of Florida when Pearl Harbor came.
Garvin: Okay.
King: And that ended that. I finished the school year, and people my age were subject to the draft, we knew the time would come when you were going to be serving, you know. So I finished that one year of college and came home. And I had some odd jobs around there. You couldn’t get a meaningful job because you were subject to the draft. So if he gave you a job that required some training, and this kind of thing. Then you didn’t know when Uncle Sam was going to say “you are it.” So I just messed around there for a while and I finally decided if I was going into the military, I would do something I would choose to do, as opposed to just being drafted. So I enlisted in the air corps.
Garvin: So we will definitely bring that back up of course, but I want to know what your college experience was? I know you only went for a year, but did you enjoy it?
King: You mean after school and before I went into the army?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Well at one [clears throat]--one job I had was night manager of a small restaurant. That sounds like a big title.
Garvin: {laughs}.
King: But it was a narrow restaurant, about fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long {shows dimensions of restaurants with hands using a notepad}. More or less hotdogs, hamburgers, they did fix breakfast and stuff. I was the night manager, which means I was only guy there from seven at night to seven in the morning [chuckling].
Garvin: Wow!King: It was a twelve hour shift. I worked seven at night to seven in the morning. And whenever I was not fixing food or something, I mopped the floors, did the dishes, and those kinds of things. And then I later found out about a job. I had a cousin in Richmond, Virginia, and I went down there, and I got a job working in an office. I took typing in high school, and I could type, and that made me qualified [both chuckle] to work in an office down there for a trucking company. And I worked down there for a while. And so then like I said, I finally decided, well, I will just enlist in something that I want to do, and I chose the army –they called it the army air corps at that time, not the air force, but the army air corps. I wanted to be a pilot. So I was ordered to report for duty in Richmond, Virginia on the 19th of February, 1943. Two days before that, Louise and I decided we would get married.
Garvin: And how was that--how did this come about? Did you guys--I know you guys were going out for a while, Did your families support it? Did you guys go to the town center or did you guys go to a church?
King: You mean, did they support the marriage?
Garvin: Yes.
King: They did not know it. We made, when I say it wasn’t like a spur of the moment. We had thought over the two years past that we loved each other, we wanted to have a life together, and I was going away to the military, just looking back on it, I said if one of my girls had done that, I would have hung him up by a rope.
Garvin: [laughs].
King: Such a bad decision. But you know, marry a guy and he is off to the army. I mean it--it was not a mature decision. But we loved each other and we wanted to make that commitment. So we eloped. So we went to the next county, and--Garvin: And this is in Virginia?
King: In Virginia, and we got a license and we were married. Her parents did not know it until later, she was in college at Radford, Virginia. She was in college herself. So we pulled it off, and it was a pretty sad farewell. I left the next day for military service--the day after we were married on the seventeenth, and I left on the eighteenth, and reported to Richmond, Virginia.
Garvin: And we are going to get right into Richmond, Virginia in a second, but I just want to know if you remember exactly where--if you know what you were doing on Pearl Harbor, on December 7?
King: Well, we checked in down there and were sworn in, and they put us on a troop train and sent us to Miami Beach, Florida for training. We got on a train and we had bagged meals, it was not a sleeper, just a coach. And that was a long trip to Florida.
Garvin: So I just want to know, do you remember where you were during Pearl Harbor? Do you remember what you were doing?
King: Well, I was at the University of Florida when Pearl Harbor occurred. Overall horrified of course—you know horrified. It was unbelievable.
Garvin: What were you feeling at that time?
King: Well, your country has just been attacked by a foreign government. You could imagine--you have to imagine since you weren’t there. I mean it was horrific, the idea that we would be attacked like that by the Japanese. There was a great rallying cry of support throughout the country. The current war that has been going on these years now in Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth, has not produced the amount of support, widespread across the country, there have been a lot of criticisms of it and I am not taking sides but one way or another. I am just saying that thing happened at Pearl Harbor and the Americans came together as if one voice. The support for that war is simply unbelievable, unbelievable. The armed forces were supported in every way by the people, and the whole country was behind the war effort. We had been attacked and so as it turned out I was going to be--I didn’t know what role I was going to play. But I decided if I was going to serve I wanted to be a pilot. Just enlisting for air corps, it was the air corps then, army air corps, just enlisted and to have the desire to be a pilot didn’t mean you were signed up the first day to be a pilot. That was my goal.
Garvin: Can you go into the training of what your basic training was for the air force and your whole experience, the whole training and getting there?
King: Oh yes. We got on a train in Richmond, Virginia and we had bagged lunches for three days. It took a third day to get into Miami Beach. They told us not to bring any clothes, just your toilet articles. That you would have a uniform issued when you got there. So we ate the bagged meals for three days in getting to Miami Beach, Florida. And we got off the train at about two in the morning and civilian clothes on of course. Most of us were already home sick, you know. There we were at two in the morning and we had a first lieutenant who met the train there. I remember his name to this day. His name was Lieutenant Saltzen.
Garvin: How do you spell that?
King: I think it was, S-A-L-T-Z-E-N or something like that. He was strictly military. He had his visor over his cap two fingers above his nose here [Mr. King demonstrates a cap being two finger lengths above his nose]. Steely eyed guy, shoulders back, gut in. We’re all bedraggled, homesick guys here, on a train for three days, already homesick. Tired, sleepy, hungry. We got off like a bunch of bedraggled ne’er-do-wells, and this lieutenant showed up and he said, “Men, I am Lieutenant Saltzen,” he says “You’ve been on the train for three days and nights, you are tired and worn out. My job is to get you off your feet and into the beds for some much needed rest, and I intend to do that job. And at four o’clock this morning,” just two hours later, “My job will be to get you off your feet and on your feet, and I intend to that job.” And he did. Bugle blew at four o’clock in the morning and we got in the bed at two o’clock. Four o’clock in the morning we were on our feet. Welcome to the military, you know. And it was a tough time. Unfortunately, the uniforms were not there for us when we got there. It was two weeks before we got any uniforms. So we were wearing our civilian clothes for two weeks learning close order drills {clears throat], taking calisthenics, and all this kind of stuff. So it was like “welcome to the military.” And it was very disappointing for most of us, but we got through it. We stayed in a first hotel by the way, on Miami Beach, I mean, as a civilian, it was top drawer, first class. But the military had removed all of the furniture, and had taken up the carpets in the lobby, and the halls, and the rooms. So it was concrete floors, steel bunks, that was it. I don’t know what they had done with all the lush furnishing they had, probably stored it. So it was bare bones. So we took military training, close ordered drills, calisthenics, physical training. And it was a rough beginning.
Garvin: And this is in Miami?
King: Miami Beach.
King: Of course, you got the inoculations and stuff, and--he was going to use the term “whip everyone into shape,” I mean we were all young guys, not military by trade. And they were getting everyone into shape. We had close-ordered drills, very high tech, high demanding physical training, running two miles a day and taking exercises, and getting in shape. And I wondered what does that have to do with flying an airplane.
Garvin: [laughs}.
King: That had to come later.Garvin: Did a lot of people make it through? Did a lot of people drop out?
King: Well, I would not be aware of the numbers. I don’t know what they would do with you if you could not cut the mustard, whether they would discharge you or what. Or send you to the infantry, I don’t know. But I do remember that they were very strict on orders. The whole thing “was an order is to be followed,” period. They were indoctrinating you from laissez-faire, laid back, high school students into this military [regiment], see. That didn’t bother me. That didn’t bother me. There were people who wouldn’t feel too well in the morning because they were not looking forward to the day’s activities, so they would say they weren’t feeling well. And they would need to go to the infirmary, but what they did, all those people that said they weren’t feeling well, need to go to the infirmary. They sent them down to the lobby of the hotel and it was about ten o’clock before the ambulance showed up to haul them in. They weren’t out, out, but that is how they transported them. During that two hour period that those people that reported they were sick were assigned to scrub the floors of the hotel with scrub brushes.
Garvin: Wow [both laugh]!
King: It was a concrete floor. All the carpeting was up, see, barebones. So some of them got to feel better right away [both laugh}. You know what I am saying?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Somebody was kind of wanting to goof off a little bit, see? But the military sees through that kind of stuff. So anybody that was too sick to report for drill that day was given the job of scrubbing the floor. But it was two weeks before we got our uniforms. So it was tough, but we had enlisted in the air corps. So far all you were doing was close order drills, calisthenics, and stuff like that.Garvin: And after the basic training, how did you do--what did you do for the training for the flying?
King: OK. They sent us up to Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. And the gymnasium at that school, all of that had been converted over, taken over I guess, by the military. What was a humongous, big gymnasium, was converted into sleeping quarters. We had bunks that were like three high, row after row after row after row. And that is where we slept, and of course we eat, they fixed the meals up there. And we had revelry at six o’clock in the morning. They had a P.A. system hooked up in there and a bugle on a recorder I guess, and like at five thirty in the morning the bugle would blast off in the sound system in the auditorium, the gymnasium and get you up, you had five minutes to get outside. This is a funny story. It was cold, it was winter time, and it was cold! So some of the guys would dismiss you after a quick roll call, and then one guy would report “all accounted for sir,” and dismiss us, and you could go back in. So some guys decided they wanted to go back in and take a little extra cat nap. So what they would do, is put their overcoats and their shoes on, long overcoats and shoes, and go out to be there for the check, see? To report in, and when they would say “dismiss,” they would go back in and get a little nap. Well, you don’t fool these sergeants. Take my word for it. He was on to that, so one morning we stood out there at attention, really a very cold morning. He said “okay men, I want all of you take your overcoats off, drop them at your feet.”
Garvin: [laughs].
King: Well needless to say [laughs], the guys that were in their underwear, were not only a little bit embarrassed, but freezing, too. And the sergeant never said a word about anybody not being dressed, he just had you stand at attention for about ten minutes [both laugh]. Never said a word about it, never chewed anybody out, they just had ten minutes, and he would say, “OK, dismissed.” Well, needless to say, after that nobody ever went out without their coat on [both laughing]. That was a funny story. But there then we went to fly Piper Cubs. Taught us to fly our very first flight thing. We have been in several months now, and we thought we are finally going to get around to what we came here to do. So we took training in Piper Cubs. We were there for a while, then they sent us down to San Antonio, Texas. It was a classification center. You went down there for interviews and physicals, and this kind of stuff. You made known what your desire to do would be. You might be a pilot, you may be could be a navigator. So I indicated a desire to be a pilot, and they gave me some tests and all this kind of stuff.
Garvin: What did those tests entail?
King: What?
Garvin: Do you remember what those tests entailed?
King: No. No. I don’t remember, they just questioned you a lot, and some of you, some--then of course part of it depended on their need. If they didn’t need pilots as much as they needed navigators, you may have enlisted to fly an airplane, but you might end up being a navigator. So fortunately I got my choice of being a pilot. So then we went to Coleman, Texas. A small cow town in the heart of Texas, and we flew PT 13’s. It is a single engine, open cockpit, airplane. And we had already flown in the Piper Cubs. And we went to single engine PT--PT 19’s I believe, PT 19’s, single engine, open cockpit, two seats, one behind the other. And we had civilian instructors teaching us how to fly, and my instructor was Mr. Gobble, like a turkey gobble, Mr. Gobble. And we flew, took lessons, several flights up and around and around.
Garvin: Do you know what you feeling the first time you were in--the first flight that you took?
King: My feeling? Oh I was excited! I loved it.
Garvin: You weren’t nervous at all?King: No. No. I loved it. And, So anyway, we landed, the field had a limited number of landing strips on it, so they rented, leased some land from farmers in the area. So we learned to take off on these flat farm fields out there. And there would be five or six instructors with their students out there and taking, flying around, had like an air pattern up there. These instructors would stretch back onto a tree and have their coffee or whatever while their guys were--while the others were teaching, see. Finally, one day we landed and Mr. Gobble said to me, “You got it.” I said “what does that mean?” He said, “you take off, single, by yourself.” First solo flight.
Garvin: Wow.
King: And of course you are all nervous about it. So I said, “OK,” so I got into the plane and took off and made a nice takeoff, circling around up there, and he is watching from under the tree. And all the other instructors are all watching their guys. Came in, made an absolute beautiful landing, touched down just as smooth as silk, come down through the farm field there, the grass field, and all at once that thing went into a tailspin on the ground. Just like this, around and around and around [makes circler motion with his pointer finger on the table]. And a cloud of dust came up and the engine died. So here comes Mr. Gobble across the field there, and I said to myself, they called it washing out when you didn’t make the grade, you washed out. And you went to the infantry, see. I said “Man, I messed up here, messed up here.” Mr. Gobble came over, he said “give me the crank.” You cranked those engines by hand to start them from outside the plane of course. He said, “give me the crank,” he said, “you are going again,” I was grateful for that. I thought maybe he would say “You are out of here.” He cranked it up, took off, and went around, made another beautiful landing, came in, ground looped the airplane again. In a big cloud of dust.Garvin: [laughs]. King: He told me afterwards, “look, what happened is you thought when you wheels touched the ground that you thought it was all over, that was just the beginning of the landing. Until that plane comes to a stop, you have to maintain control of it.” So he said, “You probably took your feet off the rudders, and a wind came along, and blew the tail surface over, and the plane spun around. Keep your feet on the rudders until the plane rolls to a complete stop. You are still in control of that airplane until it stops.” “Just touching down, that is not all over then, see?” I said, “yes sir,” went up, came back, make a long story short, I ground looped it a second time. I just knew then that I am out of here, I mean man, I am gone. He says “give me the crank,” He cranked it again and said “go and remember what I told you, keep your feet on the rudders until the plane stops rolling.” Next time I came in, I made a perfect three point landing and rolled to a stop. It was great.
Garvin: Wow!
King: Took a breath of relief in because you know I thought I failed, but he was a good guy. I guess he recognized that I had some potential. Anyway, we finally finished that training, and they sent us up to, I can’t think of the name of the town in Texas, and we flew closed cockpit planes up there, more powerful engines, larger airplanes, BT-13. It was a BT-13, closed cockpit. And we learned that [clears throat], then they ask you to make a choice between what you wanted to be, a single engine or a multi-engine aircraft. They were basically fighter pilots or bombers. And I chose multi-engine, I wanted multi-engine aircraft. I don’t know why, I just wanted a bigger airplane. So, they sent me to Dodge City, Kansas. We learned to fly--wait a minute, I am ahead of the story. Before we did that, I went to twin engine, twin engine trainer planes, and learned to fly twin engine planes. Then they sent me to B-26 training in Dodge City, Kansas. A B-26 Martin Marauder. And so I took the training there, oh by the way I graduated from this second two engine thing in ’44.
Garvin: OK, ’44.
King: I went in, in February, ’43, and this was April ’44. I was class 44D. Forty-four was the year, D was the fourth month. January through March, 44D. And I got my wings and a commission as a second lieutenant. And I got my first leave, my first leave, mind you I went in, in February, ’43 and it was April ’44 before I ever had an overnight pass.
Garvin: And your wife at this time was in Virginia…
King: She followed me wherever I went.
Garvin: Oh really?
King: Bless her heart.
Garvin: What was that like for her?
King: Well, it was difficult, it was difficult. She was in college at the time we got married but she finished that year. She came up to Indianapolis once to visit me, and needless to say by that time her family had recovered from her announcement that we had gotten married.
Garvin: [laughs]. King: I left town before they had gotten the word. That is just as well, I figured her father would be after me [both laugh]. Bless her heart, she came up to Indianapolis, stayed a few days, and then she joined me down in San Antonio. And each time I moved, she would move. We were not supposed to let them know, anybody know, you weren’t even supposed to have family with you for that matter. We didn’t have a lot to say about that. We kept quiet about that. So I would go to a news station and I would call her and tell her where we were. She would get on a bus and come to Coleman, Texas, a little cow town down there. She rented--she and another wife--well I am getting ahead of my story. When I went to San Antonio for classification, she came down, and I had met a chaplain there, got to know him quite well, and he had known some people in Virginia. As it turns out, he had stopped by my wife’s farm at one time.
Garvin: Really?
King: Yeah, coincidence. And he said “Mo and I have an extra bedroom,” he said, “your wife and her friend can stay at our house.”
Garvin: Wow.
King: And so they stayed at the chaplain’s house. But then when we got moved, they had to go ahead and find a place to stay. Try and find a job. She had jobs at different things.
Garvin: Do you know what she did?
King: Well, at the last place in Lubbock, she worked at a drug store that served breakfast and stuff in it too. She was a waitress at the drug store, across the street from the Hilton Hotel. So she had a job there, she was a trooper I’ll tell you, I always was indebted to her. She tramped around all over the country to be with me, when she never had an overnight pass until I got a commission. Can you believe that?
Garvin: Wow. So that is over a year of training?
King: Oh yeah, we had half a day on Saturday or Sunday, but not both. You had to be back by four o’clock and of course they gave no consideration to you being married because your family is not supposed to be with you in the first place.
Garvin: How often did you see her?
King: How often did I see her?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Either on Saturday or a Sunday, not both. Garvin: Okay.
King: Once I got a commission of course, it was okay then. But during the cadet training, that was it. You could take a bus into San Antonio for the afternoon. If you missed the bus, the next week you didn’t get to go in at all. It was military training at its peak. In cadet training--they would come in, to inspect the barracks. Everybody had rows of cots. Your clothing had to be hung in a certain order, your first class uniforms, your shirts, your pants, all the buttons on every garment had to be buttoned. It didn’t matter that you gotta unbutton them to put them on
Garvin: [laughs].
King: I mean that was it. Your shoes had to be polished and laced up. The ones that you left under your bunk had to be laced up. Of course, you had to unlace them to get them on, but that neither here nor there. All of this was part of discipline, and taking orders, and following orders. At the time that is what it was. Learn to obey an order, when you are given an order, you don’t question why, you are to do or die. Right? And they would inspect your barracks. The guy would drop a fifty cent piece on the top cover of your blanket there and if it didn’t bounce up, meaning if that bed cover wasn’t stretched tight, then you would get a demerit for that. If you had a shirt hanging up besides your bed and you didn’t have every button on it buttoned, that is a demerit. That is a demerit for each button that isn’t buttoned. If your shoes aren’t polished and laced, then that is a demerit. And they would assign you a demerit for that. For each demerit that you got, you had to walk the ramp with the backpack, one hour for each demerit. And if you owed any demerits, you owed any walking, then you didn’t go in town on the weekends, for that one day, half a day. The demerits, you had to walk them off. All of that is part of discipline, do what you’re told, when you’re told, how you’re told, how often you are told, don’t question authority, you just do it!Garvin: So I am guessing you were very good about buttoning it up and polishing.
King: I never got a demerit. If you failed to salute a superior officer you--well all officers were superior, we were enlisted, we were buck privates. If you failed to [salute], he would say to you “take two,” and you would go to the orderly and report to Lieutenant so and so as giving you two demerits and put it on the chart, see? You had like six or eight a week that you were allowed freebies, after that you walked the ramp for an hour for every demerit. It all was part of discipline, do what you are told, when you are told, how you are told. Do not question authority. You know, I mean does that make sense to you?
Garvin: Yes it does.
King: So no matter what, later on in life if your.
Garvin: It prepares you for combat…
King: If you are given an order, you carry it out. So finally we graduated, got our wings, got a commission as a second lieutenant, and got our uniforms for the first time, this had been from February of one year to April of the following year. What fourteen months?
Garvin: Was there a ceremony or anything?
King: Yeah. Fairly low key, but you know.
Garvin: Was your wife able to be there?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Hey, I am a commissioned officer now, she can be wherever she wants to be.
Garvin: {laughs}.
King: And then the question of where are you going to go from here? Well, they sent us to--oh by the way we got a leave, and hadn’t had any leave at the time in the thirteen months, no leave time, we got a two week leave to Virginia, where our families were, and they thought we were pretty first class because I had a uniform, and she had worked, and bought herself some new clothes. They thought we were very successful, which we were at that point. But it didn’t come easy, it was a long, drawn out affair. And so they sent us to Dodge City, Kansas, where we learned to fly B-26’s, Martin Marauders. We couldn’t find a place to live there. Housing was hard to come by, we finally rented a basement, now I don’t mean a basement apartment, I mean we rented a basement that had a bed in it.
Garvin: Someone’s house…
King: And an icebox, block ice that you put in it, and a concrete floor, and you hung your clothes over the rafters on nails up there. But it was all the housing that you could find. We loved it, we had our own place. The coal bin was in the basement too, and they brought a load of coal and dumped that in the basement, and a cloud of coal dust would come all over you. We loved it, because we had our own place [both laugh]. It was pretty simple but we loved it. So we learned to fly B 26’s there.
Garvin: How long were you there?
King: I don’t remember the time, but from there we went to Lake Charles, Louisiana. And, then we went to Barksdale field and Shreveport. So we flew, still training and flying those.
Garvin: How was the training different from the other planes that you flew?
King: How was the training different? Well, the other planes were fairly small planes. You are looking at a twin engine bomber, and by the way it was made by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore. Martin Marauder, that was the forerunner I think of Martin Marietta, which is now the company--this is what the B-26 looked like [goes over to a table nearby and picks up a model replica of the B-26 he flew in which was made by a neighbor].
Garvin: Oh, wow!--And where were you stationed in that [referring to model plane}?King: Well, we finished the training with the B-26’s, down there they put crews together, you have to have a pilot, a copilot, and a bombardier. They are all commissioned officers. Most of us were second lieutenants, some of them were flight officers, second lieutenants. You had three enlisted men, you had a radio gunner, and the armorer gunner, and the engineer gunner [Pointing at the front, middle, and back of plane]. They all--the gunners, see you had tail guns here, machine guns here, machine guns here, then this would slide the door back here, and you would have machine guns here on this side, and tail guns [Mr. King is pointing at the tail, side and under the wings, and next to the doors in the back respectively when describing the placement of the guns]. And there were two guns mounted on the side of the fuselage that the pilot could fire. And so, the engineer gunner, in addition to being a gunner, he had to deal with the engine and the engineering part of the play. The armorer gunner, he had to do with the bombs, uploading the bomb ammunition, and this kind of stuff. And the radio gunner of course was the communication guy. So we had three enlisted men and three officers. And so we trained together as a crew. We had one mishap. We were flying from Lake Charles, Louisiana to Barksdale Field in Shreveport. And as we landed, see all these planes have retractable landing gear, just like the airliners do, and as we landed, the landing gear folded up, into the nousel here, and the wing came and hit the ground like this [showing one wing on model airplane touching ground, while other wing is up in the air], we are going down a runway like this, and sparks are flying everywhere. We managed to bring--it slid off the runway over here towards some parked aircraft, but it didn’t hit them. It was a little scary kind of thing there. Nobody got hurt. I don’t know what happened there. When the gear comes down, there is a pin that fires behind it, a pin so that it can’t close up, and it is a safety feature because hydraulics bring it down and up, see? But something there, the pin misfired or something, and let the gear close up on it. And when this wing hit the ground sparks were flying everywhere you know. So we all bailed out, because you can get out of this cockpit up here, out here over the top. So everyone bailed out, and there was an instructor pilot with us, and he was in the right seat, and I was flying the airplane, we all jumped off the plane to the ground, and he fractured his ankle when he hit the ground, but it wasn’t from the crash itself.
Garvin: So you were piloting?
King: Yeah I was piloting.
Garvin: Oh, wow!
King: Yeah.
Garvin: Well, great job landing that {both laugh}.
King: Well, that was kind of scary, needless to say when these props {propellers} hit the ground, hit the pavement, sparks are flying everywhere. You can imagine, I mean sparks are flying everywhere because the plane is like this down the runway [one wing against the ground again]. It was kind of scary.
Garvin: I have gotten the impression that a lot of air force people--like they named their planes. Did you ever name your plane?
King: No. It had the name when we got it.
Garvin: Do you know what it was called?
King: Bad Penny.
Garvin: Oh so this is--right there where you wrote the name? [pointing at name under cockpit in model plane]
King: Yeah. A resident here in town, in Homewood, put this together for me.
Garvin: Oh wow. King: And he put Bad Penny—and this was the number of my plane, see? {points to numbers on top of rudder}
Garvin: Oh wow.
King: Yeah. So he personalized it and put Bad Penny there on it see…
Garvin: That looks great.
King: And underneath it said “Bad Penny, it always turns up.”
Garvin: [Laughs].
King: Ha. That is what was what written on it {laughs}. They had a lot of funny names on planes.
Garvin: And so when you are in Louisiana, this is about mid 1944?
King: I graduated in ’44 so--yeah well, it took several months of training in the B-26, several months of training. And then, finally the time came to go overseas. So they sent us up to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. And all the people going to Europe, of course, left out of New York, the port of New York.
Garvin: So you were going to Europe?
King: We went up there and your wife wasn’t even supposed to know where you were, let alone meet you, but she came up. I told her anyways. She came up, she got a room in a boarding house up there. But we could only get in town about every three days or something. You had passes you know, you couldn’t come in everyday. So she was there. Just found a room with a lady up there. So, the guys who didn’t have any family up there, which most of us--we weren’t supposed to have any family up there. I would borrow their pass and I would go into town. We went into New York to see some Broadway shows a couple of times while I was waiting.
Garvin: Anything really good?King: I don’t even remember the name of them now. You are talking, what? 1944…
Garvin: What this a big surprise for you, you know since you grew up in West Virginia? Going to New York City and New Jersey?
King: Well, I was an old country boy getting used to the big city. Of course, some of these places we lived in Texas were just small towns, like Coleman had one traffic light in it.
Garvin: [laughing]
King: San Anjelos, Lubbock, Lubbock big city, anyway she came--I told her “Louise, I can’t be in touch with you so anytime that you haven’t heard from me two days in a row, you know we’re gone, we’re gone.” So I went in a couple times. I went into New York to see a couple shows and the word could come at anytime, so when the word came down, and we had to pack it in and head up to the port of New York, and so she knew after two days that I was gone.
Garvin: Do you know when this is about? Do you know what date this is about?
King: This would have been, I guess this would have been in January, 1945. I graduated April 1944, and had all this training see, so January ’45. So we got on the Queen Mary, at that time it was the largest ship afloat, the largest ship in the world.
Garvin: Wow.
King: There were six thousand crew and people on that ship, and it only took us five days to cross the Atlantic Ocean to get over there. We had no escort. Most troop ships had escort vessels to fight off submarines.
Garvin: The U-boats and everything.
King: They said this ship is so fast that there is no German submarine that can catch it, the only way they could catch is if by pure chance they intercept it out on the ocean somewhere. It would be pure chance. Otherwise, you can outrun anything. No vessel is to accompany it over there. We stayed, we landed over there, and stayed in--where did we land? Scotland, or somewhere over there, and we were there a few days and they sent us over to France, to airstrip A-72, which was about 90 miles northeast of Paris. Small, rural, French town. A little town named Saint Catan. And coincidentally, I couldn’t tell him where we were, but after the war was over, I told my dad where we were, and it turns out that he had been in the area in World War I as an infantrymen.
Garvin: Your dad served in World War I?
King: Yeah. Yeah. He was a veteran of World War I.
Garvin: That is amazing.
King: So we flew out of there, and the war was nearing an end, and I didn’t get in full time [Meaning he didn’t serve the amount of missions needed to go home]. I flew twenty-seven missions over Germany, and kept the same crew the whole time. A good crew. And it was quite an experience. We had some successful flights, we dropped some bombs on railroad yards, and factories. We did a lot of what they called strategic bombing, we weren’t bombing troops or something like that. The effort the airforce was making was to destroy the enemy’s capabilities to make war. If you blow up their oil refineries, they can’t produce gas. If you blow up ball bearing factories, then can’t get parts for tanks and all this stuff. It was strategic bombing to destroy their capabilities of making war. So we destroyed a lot of places like railroad yards, bridges, they called them B-26, “bridge busters.”
Garvin: [Laughing].
King: If you got a bridge across a river, a big river, and it is fifty miles away from another bridge, you have impaired the ability of their ground forces to move tanks and troops across the river. You take those bridges out. They called them the “bridge busters.” Bridges, ammunition factories, oil refineries, railroad yards. The first bunch that come in, you might have a railroad yard that is 20 tracks across, then they narrow down towards the ends, the siding, so that they can move in at about two rails. The first bunch in would drop bombs at the entrance to that railroad yard, and the second bunch here {draws second wave of bombers dropping bombs on trains, not entrance like first wave}, because they start taking off when they see an air raid about to happen. They pull all their stuff out of there.
Garvin: Did you guys ever get--was there a lot of anti-aircraft fire?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We had some bullets holes and--
Garvin: Wow.
King: Oh yeah. Well anti-aircraft fire and fighter pilots. The Germans had a few fighter pilots up there. Of course it was up to these guys with the guns to take them out.
Garvin: Was it ever really a close call? Did they ever get really close to maybe shooting you down?
King: Well, we were never disabled, we had some holes here and there, but we never did that--that Martin Marauder, the Bad Penny, that was the name of it. We never had to abort and come back.
Garvin: Did everyone on your crew make it back safely?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know sometimes we had to change a target if the weather was so bad that the target--you might get the word to go to an alternate target, instead of that target. These were not as big as like the B-24’s and B-17’s, they were all four engines, we were twin engines. And so let me make some point very clear here. I did not then, and I do not now, consider myself as any kind of a hero. I simply drove the plane. I drove the plane over there and back. That was it. We never did anything spectacular. We just did what we were told to do. You got some awards, air medals and stuff like that, but that was across [the board]. Everybody got those. I mean there is nothing unusual about--I am just another fly boy, that is all, just like most of us were.
Garvin: Well, I can just say, it means a lot. I think it means a lot, even to people today.
King: It is just like anybody who has had a job. If you were a clerk in a grocery store, you went everyday and you did your job, you came home, and that is what you did. Excuse me. [Mr. King at this point gets up and grabs a glass case containing his medals, awards, and wings] This is the air medal, if you flew five combat missions, you got an air medal, and for each additional five you flew, you got a cluster to go on the air medal. So first, this strip would start at five missions, then ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five. I had twenty-seven missions that we flew--there is the dog tag. You know what dog tags are don’t you?
Garvin: Wow. Yeah.
King: And these are my wings. Those are actually the first ones I had. In the meantime I got promoted to first lieutenant and then later they gave me a terminal leave promotion to captain. That is meaningless because I was getting out anyway. I don’t even know why they did that. Oh, so the war is over.
Garvin: So Hitler is killed [suicide] in his bunker, so then V-Day comes, so do you know where you were…
King: That is where we were when the war ended, we were still at the airstrip in France.
Garvin: Do you know what you were feeling at that time?
King: What can you say? The war is over.
Garvin: Were you a little bit surprised, or were you expecting it?King: We knew we had the upper hand. I guess selfishly you were hoping that you wouldn’t get blown away on the last mission or something {both laugh}. But obviously everybody is gratified that the war is over for obvious reasons. We are not going to lose any more people, the Germans are not going to lose any more people, and we are going to go home one of these days. But it was several months before we could come home. You stop and think about it, how many millions of American military people were overseas. The war ends okay, of course it was not over in.
Garvin: In Japan.
King: Yeah, Japan in the pacific. But you got to get all those people home. Well, it took years to get them all over there, and it is going to take a long time to get them home. What they did was, I don’t know how they did the ground troops, but the as far as the air force is concerned, you were given points for each month you spent overseas. That way, the people at the higher points, came home first, which is fair. If you had been there twelve months and you have another guy that has been there six months, then you don’t get the six month guy home first. It was fair, they had a point system. So each day the Stars and Stripes publication would show at what point level they were at now. As you gradually got down to where you were--it was fair, it was fair. But we were there a good while. After a good while when the war was over, what was it, May?
Garvin: Yes.
King: Well by the way, in the meantime my wife was working at a powder plant in Redford, Virginia. Where they were making munitions.
Garvin: So she moved back after you took off?King: Yes. And she worked in the employment office. And of course they continued there after the war was over in Europe, because they are still going in Japan. So, on the day that the war was over in Japan she worked in the employment office. So that morning she was filling out employment papers for people for manufacturing explosives there. So, that morning she was issuing papers to people being hired, when the word came that the war was over in Japan, she started issuing pink slips…
Garvin: [laughing].
King: Including her own. That was the last day, the day the war ended in Japan, the munitions plant shut down in Virginia.
Garvin: Wow!
King: She laughs, I was issuing papers to new employees up until12 o’clock, then she was typing up notices saying “you don’t have a job.” [laughing] Including her own, but it was for a good reason.
Garvin: For a good reason.
King: Everybody was happy that it was over.
Garvin: During this time while you were in Europe, did you keep in touch with her? Were you able to right letters?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That is the only way you can keep in touch. Excuse me a minute [Mr. King gets up at this point and goes over and grabs a photo album that includes war time photos]. During the time I was overseas. I kept a diary, just a small diary, and it was just like I was talking to her. And I told her what was going on in my mind in that particular day. And I kept that diary, and I brought it back. I kept it up through the time that the war was over. I told her that we had her baptism of fire one day. You flew six planes in a row [demonstrates where six planes were with hands], and you had a lead ship, one plane up here and one here. Then you had one lower, behind here, lower altitude, and two over here. Six planes in a box. When it had a maximum effort, just about every plane was in the air. I mean it was maximum. They put everything in the air that didn’t need maintenance or something. Those were boxes, and on one of the missions, I am flying here, and here is the lead plane, you got a guy up here, and we were here [Mr. King’s plane was to the left of the “guy up here”], this plane took a blast from anti-aircraft shells from the ground. This thing virtually exploded right then and there. And the guy, the rest of the crew, of course I couldn’t see anything except paying attention to my flying. They said there were no parachutes. So that meant that no one got to bail out. An anti-craft shell just hit the plane. Just took it right out of the sky. Just disintegrating. If you get disabled the plane is still losing altitude, but you can still bail out. Of course then you probably become a German prisoner of war, but this thing just simply exploded and disintegrated right debris--was flying all over the place. And I told Louise in my note that day, I had my baptism of fire that day, I had never seen anything like it. You don’t know what is going on in the other planes around you, but that one is right here. We had a flight leader, we were flying up here one day, he wanted you lapped in close, he wanted this wing overlapping his wing [Mr. King’s hands show that both wings are on top of one another]. And he said, “If you can’t read my engine oil temperature on my gauge, then you are too far out.”
Garvin: [Laughs]
King: But he would say it not literally, but if you can’t read the instruments on my instrument panel, then you are too far out. You want these wings lapping over like that. You could not take your eyes off of him flying. Because when he turned, he didn’t get on the radio and say turn, he just turned. So when he turned, you had to turn. If you didn’t, his wing would come up and hit your wing. You could hardly blink in tight formation again because all the six planes would go together. When he would go to drop the bombs, they would drop two thousand pounds of bombs out of each airplane. That is a lot of explosive, a lot of explosive. But he was a good flight leader and actually came back from overseas. I was in Greenville, South Carolina and going to a football game one night, and the war is over. And right ahead of me is this guy, who was the flight leader. He was going to college. This was a year later. But I came back from overseas and they gave me a job as a sales officer at the commissary. There is where they supply food stuff for military people, and supply the food to the mess hall to feed all the men. It was a desk job. I hated it. Desk job, I didn’t want any part of a desk job. But that is the way it was. Everybody had to have a ground oriented MOS, Military Occupational Specialty. So I was enlisted as a sales officer. I wanted to be a pilot. I didn’t join the air corps to sit behind a desk but they didn’t need any more pilots. What are you going to do? Somebody got to do the paperwork. But anyways, while I was at that job, the powers that be decided that everyone was going to take glider pilot training. Now, no one ever explained to me, not that they owed an explanation, but other than just keeping you busy, I don’t know why. Why do we want to become glider pilots? You know, the war is over, and besides I didn’t want any part of an airplane that didn’t have an engine on it. So first and only time I tried to get out of an assignment. I always took what they told me and did it to the best of my ability. But I didn’t want any part of flying a plane with no engine in it.
Garvin: [laughs].
King: I talked to my superior and he said, “I will take care of that for you,” like he is going to get me off of it. About a week went by, and I am at the desk, and the phone rings. An officer up at the line says “why aren’t you up here for glider pilot training?” “You were told to be here,” and I couldn’t say that that major so and so was going to take care of that. I just said, “yes sir.” I reported up there and took the glider pilot training. I asked him about it later and he said, “I tried to work out that deal, but I couldn’t get it for you.” Thanks a lot Pete[both laugh]! So I went up there and took glider pilot training.
Garvin: So.
King: That is the weirdest thing in the world to be up there, and unhooked from a tow plane, and you have no engine. You can only go one way.
Garvin: Yeah I remember, you know, on D-day when they had all those glider pilots flying in there and dropping off and everything.
King: Well, they stopped it before they got to the final thing. The thing was, the glider is sitting on the ground, and a cable coming across it hooks in front of the glider and a C-47 comes swooping in at low altitude with the cable and the hook. And grabs that cable and snatches that right off the ground.
Garvin: Wow.
King: See? It comes in with the hook and swoops in like that, and snatches the glider off the ground from a stand still position. Just about three days before I was scheduled for that, they stopped the program. I have never been so glad in my life [both laugh]!
Garvin: You were really nervous about it?
King: I don’t like flying an airplane can only go one way, and that is down [both laughing]. And we had night landings too, to make for those things.
Garvin: Wow.
King: They set up a row of Christmas trees. The idea was that you would unhook from a tow pole, and you were to come over that row of trees, get the glider on the ground and stop it before these trees. And as your training advanced, they moved those roves closer together. At night time they would use smudge pots, the same thing. It was a comic sighting thing but I didn’t care much for a plane that didn’t have an engine. You know what I mean?
Garvin: Yeah. So how long did you stay over Europe? Because you said you stayed over there a little bit longer?
King: About a year. I would say about a year. I think I came in January, and came back in December.
Garvin: OK.
King: The war was over in May?
Garvin: Yes May. And Japan was August.
King: Yes, August.
Garvin: And what was your reaction to the atomic bombs, and the whole couple of weeks leading up to the surrender. And then did you even know there was such a thing as an atomic bomb then. Did you hear a lot about it?
King: No. No. No. I don’t think most of the American people know about it, did they?
Garvin: No I don’t think so. It was a top secret.
King: Well obviously it was a sense of a relief. Almost even before the so called surrender, it was obvious that that would be the end of the war.
Garvin: Were you amazed by the sheer power of it?
King: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I don’t know that I even knew that the atomic bomb existed and that they were working on it. I started to ask you if you knew, and you weren’t even a gleam in your parents’ eye {laughs}. But it was a good military experience. I think I learned a lot in the military. If I could have kept flying, I think I would have considered staying in. Of course, I might not have been allowed to. Lets face it, you have all these military people, and you don’t need them anymore. That desk job that I had, I didn’t like that. I just like to fly, I just like to fly.
Garvin: So you get back from the war, and where did you and your wife move too? Like, Virginia?
King: Well. I got a job with the Virginia department of highways, in Petersburg, Virginia. I applied for two jobs, one was to be a game warden, it is just something that came up [both laugh]. So I went to go work for the Virginia Department of Highways. I worked for them for a few years. And then I saw an ad in the paper for the Motors insurance corporation. It turned out it was from Generals Motors. They wanted someone with office experience. I was the office manager at the highway department, and it looked like a good thing to me to work for a larger company. So I applied for the job, and got it, it was in Richmond, Virginia. We lived in a town about twenty miles away, commuted. Then they transferred me from there to Roanoke, Virginia. They made me office manager at Roanoke, Virginia. About a hundred thousand population, about sixty miles from where we grew up. And I was there, and they transferred me. I wanted to get out from behind the desk. I was tired of paper work. They had a job as a claims adjuster, and they made me a claims adjuster. And then they transferred me to Washington D.C., and then we lived in Maryland at that time. And I finally retired after thirty years.
Garvin: And after you got out of the war, I just want to clarify something. Did you have any kids at this point, or was that after the war?
King: Children?
Garvin: Yeah.
King: Our first child was born in 1947. We couldn’t have kids with me over there, and her over here [both laugh]. There is a lot they can do with trans-continental, but that is not one of them. [both laugh]. Our first son was born in 1947, and Mike, our second son was born in 1950. So we have two sons and two daughters.
Garvin: And did your parents stay in Virginia during the war? Did they move or anything?
King: No. No. They stayed there in Virginia. Of course, my dad ultimately retired and they have long since passed away.
Garvin: And just for clarification, when did you move to Pennsylvania?
King: Five years ago this August. So it has been four years and seven or eight months.
{Mr. King goes on to describe his retirement in Florida, but it is not included in this transcript}
Garvin: So, I guess my last question for you is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you would like to mention or any last thoughts you experienced before the war and during the war?
King: No. I guess not. Considering I didn’t have a college education and all, I still had a good job with G.M. {Mr. King goes on to describe his years at General Motors and his health over the years, but it is not included in this transcript}.
Garvin: I just thought of one more question to ask you. I kind of skipped over this and it is kind of a big, important date in World War Two history. Do you remember hearing about D-day, or did you know what that was all about?
King: Well, I was in a PT-13, closed cockpit airplane, in the second phase of my training, when D-day occurred. I picked it up on the radio. It was anticipated of course, the time was building up a crescendo of anticipation, and I was in the air, and flipped over to the radio and heard that D-day was on. We knew--we could not conceive of all that was about to happen, except this was the beginning of a momentous time in history.
Garvin: Did you even imagine the sheer size of the force that they assembled?King: I don’t know whether people out of the know, realized the volume--It was absolutely an incredible operation. Dwight D. Eisenhower of course was the head honcho of that whole thing. And of course it was with the corporation of Great Britain and the other allies too.
{Mr. King goes on to talk about subjects already covered earlier and his son-in-law, and are not included in this transcript}.
The End